Categorization of own- and other-race faces and ingroup bias: a developmental approach

Simen HAGEN

Bruno ROSSION

People have an implicit tendency to perceive and treat other members of their in-group more positively: Ingroup Bias (IGB). Its emergence and development remain unclear. We will explore the interactions between face and speech processing in the context of the development of the IGB. In infants, we will test the hypothesis that hearing the native language in combination with looking at an own-race face versus hearing a non-native language combined with another-race face boosts the IGB. We will use face recognition paradigm and categorization test. We will also take advantage of infant's ability to mimic others and will determine if mimicry is modulated by the ethnicity of the face of a person, the language spoken (native or not). In a second part, we will not only record electroencephalography (EEG) during frequency-tagging, providing implicit quantifiable measures of IGB objectively comparable across development, but also test for evidence of interactions between face and speech processing in the context of the IGB in adults and infants. Our results will be key for understanding how infants represent their social world and determining the factors influencing their representation of others and the emergence of IGB.

Categorization, face, development, EEG

Biology, Signals and Systems in Cancer and Neuroscience