Essay

The question at the center of this article is whether or not children between 5 and 6 years of age (in comparison to adults and children between 10 and 11 years of age) consider race to be a stable over time. This concept is important in understanding both the change in cognitive development of children as well as the significances of difference in social groups as a factor in understanding race. This controlled experimental study used white children ages 10-11, white children ages 5-6, white adults, and children (ages 5-6) of a racial minority. All participants were shown pictures of a young child as well as two grown ups and asked which of the two that young child will grow up to be (with both emotion and race of the images

In this study, participants had to distinguish between hand tools and guns. The catch was that while distinguishing between each object participants were faced with either a white face or black face. There were two trials were participants took their own time decide and then they had only about a few seconds. Participants were not supposed to look at race while making their decisions. Results showed

One of the processes thought to contribute to human face perception, the human visual system integrates facial features into a gestalt whole (referred to as holistic face processing). [1]. Research indicates that face components (e.g., the eyes, nose, and mouth) are recognized better as belonging to a certain face when they were shown within the context of the whole (upright) face than when they were shown alone. However in terms of race, the other-race effect (ORE) is a well-documented recognition advantage for same-race (SR) over other-race (OR) face and has been demonstrated in line up identification, photo line ups and eye witness testimonies [2]. FFA is less active in response to OR faces than SR

The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident

In Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s talk, she discusses infants and the presence of alloparents in combination with their parents. Hrdy states that human infants fall behind other apes in physical development, but are able to monitor others and assess their intentions from a very young age. I find this interesting because often human infants are only compared to other human infants in regards to if they can hold eye contact and if they understand facial expression. When human infants are compared to other nonhuman infant primates, there is a vast difference of what human infants can be successful at. It is also interesting to note that human infants get significantly better at recognizing their mother’s face as they get older, where chimpanzees get worse at recognizing their mothers face as they get older.

A study was done by CNN in 2010 regarding children’s bias on skin color. The interviewer asked two African American children which skin color they would prefer to have out of five choices, ranging from pale white to dark brown. Both children pointed to the two lightest skin colors on the spectrum. Saying that the only reason for their choice was, “Because it looks lighter than this kind...the way brown looks really nasty for some reason, but I don’t know what reason.” (Study: White and Black). Children of the African race wish to be white because of the bias they have heard in school, media, and from adults. Kids are conditioned to believe that being African is a negative trait, simply because when first discovering Africa, Europeans painted it in the negative light. Joseph Conrad, a novelist, wrote about a European first encountering the African lifestyle. He described the men as, “ a black and incomprehensible frenzy” (Conrad 17-18). Instead of embracing the culture, Conrad’s character instead mocked it. He made it seems as if these people were animals and seeing them all together at once was a circus act; sometimes hard to understand what is occurring, but fascinating. He also uses the simple word, “Ugly” to construe the image of the African and how he felt it was disgusting that the Europeans are related to this “prehistoric man”(Conrad 18, 28). It is media like this that enforce the idea upon African American children that white people are better, and white people are more civilized. While Africans are dirty, poor, and inferior. On the contrary, later within the video, a different girl was asked a similar question to her thought on skin color and responded, “I think it is kind of magical, because I think, like, we’re not all the same we’re different and it doesn't really matter what color you are.”(Study:

However, there is an alternative explanation of the findings provided by the expert hypothesis. According to that hypothesis, in order to recognise faces we must make delicate within-class decisions on the second-order relations between facial features. Supporters of the hypothesis argue that prosopagnosia is not the injury of the ‘face’ area but injury to the region responsible for making delicate within-class decisions. When asked why faces are selectively impaired, it is argued that it only appears that way because brains depend on that mode of processing to a great extent for faces (Hole & Byrne, 2010). Consequently, there is still no definite answer to the question of whether faces are special.

The research in infancy recognition of visual stimuli has recently had a lot of attention. One such experiment compared infant’s abilities to immediately recognize objects they have been familiarized with. The results showed that the older the child, the less time it took to establish recognition that was combined with reduced recognition time (Feldman, Jankowski & Rose, 2003). This study shows that an infant develops visual recognition through time, that their brain needs time to mature into the ability to be able to establish permanent recognition.

Race and racism are a worldwide concern since they have effects on both intellectual and scientific grounds. Biologically, humans can be classified into distinct races using consistent and reliable biological criteria. This can be done by use of genetic traits that is also depicted in the physical characteristic of an individual, like skin color, hair texture, eye and nose shape, and body type. These traits also vary in different geographical areas and hence all traits have distinct geographical distributions with humans in classified races. Therefore, the biological study supports that races are valid scientifically.

It is important because from the findings of this experiment, we can relate it to the attractiveness adults see in other adults. Adults who are more attractive and have a symmetrical face are preferred over others. This experiment also brought up a good fact that, no matter what age you are, it is harder to distinguish a face if inverted. This experiment overall not only provides information about newborn infants perception, it provides a basis for development. We can use this information and connect it to development from birth to

The keyword I have chosen to research is prejudice given that the article we have been reading in the past few weeks happens to be called, “Playing with Prejudice”. In my effortless research, I simply located the article, "The Effect of Skin-Tone and Racism on Perceptions of Attractiveness", written by Lauren A. Mcdermott also Terry F. Pettijohn II. This article was a fascinating read for me as the reader because it demonstrates its evidence through several research studies saying that an individual’s skin-tone determines the attitudes also behaviors expressed toward that individual. When continuing this interesting reading it explains that African-Americans with lighter pigmented skin-tones lead beyond privileged life than those African Americans

Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder that makes it difficult or virtually impossible for people to distinguish between human faces - in the worst cases, even the faces of close family members. There are obvious advantages to being able to recognize people, one of which is to distinguish between friends and enemies. Fortunately, most humans, especially infants, are able to do so with great ease. According to various studies, it seems that at the age of just a few months, infants begin to fine-tune their face recognition skills for the types of faces which they see most often, usually faces of people of their own race or ethnicity (National Research Council, 2004).

Analyses in this experiment will done using SPSS. An ANOVA for when the faces of both race were paired with a positive or negative judgement will reveal that it is a statistically significant predictor of reaction time. This indicates that participants were faster to respond when their ingroup was associated with a positive trait. Participants will display longer response time for when the outgroup is associated with a negative trait. One-sample t-test will reveal that there is no significant difference in the results in terms of the participant gender. Two-way ANOVA for the interaction between age and reaction time for each of the four test groups reveal that there is no significant differences for both ages.

It has been suggested that an increased exposure time to faces yields a higher recognition of facial details than a shorter exposure time. This is because a longer period of time allows for a longer encoding period of pertinent information. It has also been suggested that facial recognition is significantly improved when the eyewitness makes relatively holistic or “trait-based judgment” (Bornstein et al., 2010). This outweighs analytical judgments, presenting the two main differences that directly affect identification accuracy.

Could the results of these experiments hypothesis show that the infants' and, therefore, our responses to negative social interactions are primarily neurological in origin? Do said results instead show that we are cognitively able to form judgements about negative social interactions at only three months of age?