Face Processing and the Own-race Bias - a Study of Typical Development and Autism

Same-race faces are better discriminated and recognized than less experienced, other-races faces. This "Own-Race Bias" (ORB) has been robustly demonstrated in many psychological studies, yet the perceptual basis of this phenomenon is still not well understood. Recent face perception studies have discovered that configural properties of the face (i.e., the spatial relations among features) are processed differently than featural information, and may be directly tied to developmental experience with faces. This study examines age-related changes in the ORB and seeks to determine whether a superior developmental improvement in the perception of configural information in more experienced same-race faces contributes to the emergence of the ORB. A sample of children and adults with high-functioning autism were also included to test whether these processes differ for this population. The book is addressed to researchers interested in development, face perception, and autism.