Abstract
Own-race faces are recognized more easily than faces of a different, unfamiliar race. According to the multidimensional space (MDS) framework, the poor discriminability of other-race faces is due to their being more densely clustered in face space than own-race faces. Multidimensional scaling analyses of similarity ratings (Caucasian participants, n = 22) showed that other-race (Chinese) faces are more densely clustered in face space. We applied a formal model to test whether the spatial location of face stimuli could account for identification accuracy of another group of Caucasian participants (n = 30). As expected, own-race (Caucasian) faces were identified more accurately (higher hit rate, lower false alarms, and higher A) than other-race faces, which were more densely clustered than ownrace faces. A quantitative model successfully predicted identification performance from the spatial locations of the stimuli. The results are discussed in relation to the standard MDS account of race effects and also an alternative “race-feature” hypothesis.
Article PDF
References
Ashby, F. G. (1992). Multidimensional models of categorization. In F. G. Ashby (Ed.),Multidimensional models of perception and cognition (pp. 449–484). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bothwell, R. K., Brigham, J. C., &Malpass, R. S. (1989). Cross-racial identification.Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin,15, 19–25
Bruce, V., Burton, M. A., &Dench, N. (1994). What’s distinctive about a distinctive face?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,47A, 119–141.
Busey, T. A., &Tunnicliff, J. L. (1999). Accounts of blending, distinctiveness, and typicality in the false recognition of faces.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,25, 1210–1235.
Byatt, G., &Rhodes, G. (1998). Recognition of own-race and otherrace caricatures: Implications for models of face recognition.Vision Research,38, 2455–2468.
Chiroro, P., &Valentine, T. (1995). An investigation of the contact hypothesis of the own-race bias in face recognition.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,48A, 879–894.
Craw, I. (1995). A manifold model of face and object recognition.In T. Valentine (Ed.),Cognitive and computational aspects of face recognition: Explorations in face space (pp. 183–203). London: Routledge.
Goldstein, A. G. (1979a). data II.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,13, 191–193.
Goldstein, A. G. (1979b). Race-related variation of facial features: Anthropometric data I.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,13, 187–190.
Hancock, P. J. B., Burton, A. M., &Bruce, V. (1996). Face processing: Human perception and principal components analysis.Memory & Cognition,24, 26–40.
Johnston, R. A., Kanazawa, M., Kato, T., &Oda, M. (1997). Exploring the structure of multidimensional face-space: The effects of age and gender.Visual Cognition,4, 39–57.
Johnston, R. A., Milne, A. B., &Williams, C. (1997). Do distinctive faces come from outer space? An investigation of the status of a multidimensional face-space.Visual Cognition,4, 59–67.
Kruskal, J. B., &Wish, M. (1978).Multidimensional scaling. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Lee, K. J., Byatt, G., &Rhodes, G. (2000). Caricature effects, distinctiveness, and identification: Testing the face-space framework.Psychological Science,11, 379–385.
Levin, D. T. (2000). Race as a visual feature: Using visual search and perceptual discrimination tasks to understand face categories and the cross-race recognition deficit.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,129, 559–574.
MacLin, O. H., &Malpass, R. S. (2001). Racial categorization of faces: The ambiguous race face effect.Psychology, Public Policy, & Law,7, 98–118.
Meissner, C. A., &Brigham, C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review.Psychology, Public Policy, & Law,7, 3–35.
Nosofsky, R. [M.] (1985). Overall similarity and the identification of separable-dimension stimuli: A choice model analysis.Perception & Psychophysics,38, 415–432.
Nosofsky, R. M. (1986). Attention, similarity, and the identification-categorization relationship.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,115, 39–57.
Nosofsky, R. M. (1992). Similarity scaling and cognitive process models.Annual Review of Psychology,43, 25–53.
O’Toole, A. J., Abdi, H., Deffenbacher, K. A., &Valentin, D. (1993). Low-dimensional representation of faces in higher dimensions of the face space.Journal of the Optical Society of America A,10, 405–410.
Rhodes, G., Byatt, G., Tremewan, T., &Kennedy, A. (1997). Facial distinctiveness and the power of caricatures.Perception,26, 207–223.
Shepard, R. N. (1957). Stimulus and response generalization: A stochastic model relating generalization to distance in psychological space.Psychometrika,22, 325–345.
Shepard, R. N. (1980). Multidimensional scaling, tree-fitting, and clustering.Science,210, 390–398.
Valentine, T. (1991). A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,43A, 161–204.
Valentine, T. (2001). Face-space models of face recognition. In M. J. Wenger & J. T. Townsend (Eds.),Computational, geometric, and process perspectives on facial cognition: Contexts and challenges (pp. 83–113). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Valentine, T., &Endo, M. (1992). Towards an exemplar model of face processing: The effects of race and distinctiveness.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,44A, 671–703.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Additional information
This research was supported by a grant from the Marsden Fund of New Zealand to G.R. and formed part of a PhD dissertation completed at the University of Western Australia.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Byatt, G., Rhodes, G. Identification of own-race and other-race faces: Implications for the representation of race in face space. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 735–741 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196628
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196628