The Role of Differential Experience in Facial Age Processing

The present study investigated the role of differential experience in one’s processing of facial age information. Study 1 examined how differential experience with own- and other-race individuals, as well as differential experience with own- and other-age individuals, influences children’s and adults’ abilities to process facial age information. Study 2 examined how differential sociocultural experiences influence adults’ abilities to process facial age information. The results suggest that the influence of differential experience with own- and other-race faces is most evident when individuals have extremely limited to no experience with other-race faces. There was also a clear other-age effect in young adults’ facial age judgments, presumably due to their extensive experience with own-age peers. However 9- to 10-year-olds and 13- to 14-year-olds also showed an advantage in processing facial age information for young adult faces relative to child and middle-age adult faces. Thus, the 9- to 10-year-olds and 13- to 14-year-olds may have also had the most extensive experience with young adult individuals relative to individuals from other age groups. In addition, results suggest that the efficiency with which individuals process facial age information is influenced by differential sociocultural emphases on the need to differentiate between the facial ages of social partners.Ph