Infants Rely More on Gaze Cues From Own-Race Than Other-Race Adults for Learning Under Uncertainty

Overview

Journal Child Dev

Specialty Pediatrics

Date 2017 Apr 12

PMID 28397243

Citations 12

Authors

Naiqi G Xiao

Rachel Wu

Paul C Quinn

Shaoying Liu

Kristen S Tummeltshammer

Natasha Z Kirkham

Liezhong Ge

Olivier Pascalis

Kang Lee

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces, but whether this experience has downstream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7-month-olds (range = 5.9-8.5 months; N = 96) use gaze from own- versus other-race adults to anticipate events. When gaze predicted an event's occurrence with 100% reliability, 7-month-olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own- over other-race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own- versus other-race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own versus other race to guide social interaction and learning.

Citing Articles

Diverse Face Images (DFI): Validated for racial representation and eye gaze.

Pickron C, Brown A, Hudac C, Scott L Behav Res Methods. 2024; 56(8):8801-8819.

PMID: 39285143 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02504-2.

Neural activation associated with outgroup helping in adolescent rats.

Breton J, Eisner J, Gandhi V, Musick N, Zhang A, Long K iScience. 2022; 25(6):104412.

PMID: 35663035 PMC: 9160754. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104412.

Watch and Learn: Vicarious Threat Learning across Human Development.

Skversky-Blocq Y, Haaker J, Shechner T Brain Sci. 2021; 11(10).

PMID: 34679409 PMC: 8533719. DOI: 10.3390/brainsci11101345.

Social Inference May Guide Early Lexical Learning.

Tripp A, Feldman N, Idsardi W Front Psychol. 2021; 12:645247.

PMID: 34093326 PMC: 8175981. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645247.

All contexts are not created equal: Social stimuli win the competition for organizing reinforcement learning in 9-month-old infants.

Werchan D, Amso D Dev Sci. 2021; 24(5):e13088.

PMID: 33484594 PMC: 8298591. DOI: 10.1111/desc.13088.

References

Aslin R . Perceptual Organization of Visual Structure Requires a Flexible Learning Mechanism. Infancy. 2020; 16(1):39-44. DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2010.00053.x. View

Baron A, Banaji M . The development of implicit attitudes. Evidence of race evaluations from ages 6 and 10 and adulthood. Psychol Sci. 2005; 17(1):53-8. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01664.x. View

Tummeltshammer K, Wu R, Sobel D, Kirkham N . Infants track the reliability of potential informants. Psychol Sci. 2014; 25(9):1730-8. DOI: 10.1177/0956797614540178. View

Birch S, Akmal N, Frampton K . Two-year-olds are vigilant of others' non-verbal cues to credibility. Dev Sci. 2010; 13(2):363-9. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00906.x. View

Senju A, Csibra G . Gaze following in human infants depends on communicative signals. Curr Biol. 2008; 18(9):668-71. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2008.03.059. View

Buttelmann D, Zmyj N, Daum M, Carpenter M . Selective imitation of in-group over out-group members in 14-month-old infants. Child Dev. 2012; 84(2):422-8. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01860.x. View

Bar-Haim Y, Ziv T, Lamy D, Hodes R . Nature and nurture in own-race face processing. Psychol Sci. 2006; 17(2):159-63. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01679.x. View

Wu R, Kirkham N . No two cues are alike: Depth of learning during infancy is dependent on what orients attention. J Exp Child Psychol. 2010; 107(2):118-36. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.04.014. View

Kinzler K, Dupoux E, Spelke E . The native language of social cognition. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007; 104(30):12577-80. PMC: 1941511. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0705345104. View

10.

Xiao N, Quinn P, Liu S, Ge L, Pascalis O, Lee K . Older but not younger infants associate own-race faces with happy music and other-race faces with sad music. Dev Sci. 2017; 21(2). DOI: 10.1111/desc.12537. View

11.

Kelly D, Quinn P, Slater A, Lee K, Gibson A, Smith M . Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces. Dev Sci. 2005; 8(6):F31-6. PMC: 2566511. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.0434a.x. View

12.

Trainor L, Austin C, Desjardins R . Is infant-directed speech prosody a result of the vocal expression of emotion?. Psychol Sci. 2001; 11(3):188-95. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00240. View

13.

Gergely G, Egyed K, Kiraly I . On pedagogy. Dev Sci. 2006; 10(1):139-46. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00576.x. View

14.

Kim H, Johnson S . Detecting 'infant-directedness' in face and voice. Dev Sci. 2014; 17(4):621-7. PMC: 4069237. DOI: 10.1111/desc.12146. View

15.

Rennels J, Davis R . Facial experience during the first year. Infant Behav Dev. 2008; 31(4):665-78. PMC: 2601634. DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.04.009. View

16.

Soley G, Spelke E . Shared cultural knowledge: Effects of music on young children's social preferences. Cognition. 2016; 148:106-16. PMC: 5516266. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.017. View

17.

Soley G, Sebastian-Galles N . Infants Prefer Tunes Previously Introduced by Speakers of Their Native Language. Child Dev. 2015; 86(6):1685-92. DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12408. View

18.

Dunham Y, Chen E, Banaji M . Two signatures of implicit intergroup attitudes: developmental invariance and early enculturation. Psychol Sci. 2013; 24(6):860-8. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612463081. View

19.

Poulin-Dubois D, Brooker I, Polonia A . Infants prefer to imitate a reliable person. Infant Behav Dev. 2011; 34(2):303-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2011.01.006. View

20.

Chow V, Poulin-Dubois D, Lewis J . To see or not to see: infants prefer to follow the gaze of a reliable looker. Dev Sci. 2008; 11(5):761-70. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00726.x. View