Race-Specific Perceptual Discrimination Improvement Following Short Individuation Training With Faces

This study explores the effect of individuation training on the acquisition of race-specific exper-tise. First, we investigated whether practice individuating other-race faces yields improvement in per-ceptual discrimination for novel faces of that race. Second, we asked whether there was similar improvement for novel faces of a different race for which participants received equal practice, but in an orthogonal task that did not require individuation. Caucasian participants were trained to individu-ate faces of one race (African American or Hispanic) and to make difficult eye-luminance judgments on faces of the other race. By equating these tasks we are able to rule out raw experience, visual attention, or performance ⁄ success-induced positivity as the critical factors that produce race-specific improvements. These results indicate that individuation practice is one mechanism through which cognitive, perceptual, and ⁄or social processes promote growth of the own-race face recognition advantage