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Wiley, Child Development, 3(89), p. e229-e244

DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12798

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Infants rely more on gaze cues from own-race than other-race adults for learning under uncertainty

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces, but whether this experience has down-stream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7-month-olds (Range = 5.9-8.5 months, N = 96) use gaze from own- versus other-race adults to anticipate events. When gaze predicted an event’s occurrence with 100% reliability, 7-month-olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own- over other-race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own- versus other-race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own- versus other-race to guide social interaction and learning.