EXAMINING BETWEEN-RACE PREFERENCE AND BETWEEN-RACE DISCRIMINATION IN MONOLINGUAL AND BILINGUAL 9-MONTH-OLDS

Abstract

Prior literature has shown that 9-month-old monolingual infants consistently prefer other-race over own-race faces. 9-month-old monolinguals are also able to discriminate within own-race but not other-race faces. This phenomenon is known as the other-race effect (ORE) where 9-month-old infants have perceptually attuned to frequently experienced own-race faces and show superior processing abilities of own-race over other-race faces. In this study, monolingual and bilingual 9-month-olds first underwent the race preference task where they looked at pairs of own-race Chinese faces and other race Tamil faces. They then completed the race discrimination task where they were habituated to either a Chinese or Tamil face and have to discriminate between an own- versus other-race face pairing. Results revealed that both monolingual and bilingual infants showed strong other-race preference. Infants also successfully discriminated between-races when they were habituated to own-race but not other-race face, regardless of language background. These findings shed light on face race processing in infancy and explore its relation to bilingualism.