Effect Of Race In Face Recognition Processing Way Of Research

Increasing attention has being paid to the research of other-race face recognition, and according to the findings from this research field, other-race effect has been consistently and reliably demonstrated, however, the mechanism of this effect is still under debates. Using Han faces and Uyghur faces as stimuli, we examined whether there are differences between the two types of face processing methods done by Han and Uyghur subjects.The first experiment used classic learning-recognition paradigm to compare the performance of subjects in the two different types of face recognition. We found that race effect phenomenon exist both in Han and Uyghur subjects.The second experiment used perceptual matching method to compare two types of faces containing two conditions:one is the upright condition; the other is the inverted condition. The experiment was aimed to exam the perception differences between Han and Uyghur subjects. Our preliminary study compared the upright and inverted for the processing methods. Results shown that the upright condition’s accuracy rate and reaction time were significant better than inverted condition’s; there was a significant own racial advantage in Han’s and Uyghur’s perceptual speed when faces are upright; in addition, the two race’s face inversion effect of their own race was significantly greater than the other race’s effect. The above results demonstrated there are own racial advantages in the ability of perceptual skill and using configural processing.Experiment3investigated the differences in the perceived speed of the featural change and the configural change showed that:both Han and Uighur existed featural processing faster than configural processing in perceptual speed, while this advantage had race effect.The above study shows that both Han and Uygur have race effect, and this effect shows the different recognition skill and perceptual skill between the own race and other race, and the differences are not only reflected in the configural processing, but also in the featural processing.