User:Camjohnson/sandbox

I plan on editing the Ethnicity section as it looks to be very poorly constructed. Other interesting areas that should be considered for addition in the future is facial recognition's role in attraction (facial symmetry) and learned versus innate features of facial recognition (emotional recognition; racial differences in emotional perception.)

COPIED ETHNICITY SECTION FROM FACIAL PERCEPTION PAGE (for editing):

Differences in own- versus other-race face recognition and perceptual discrimination was first researched in 1914.[90] The results of numerous studies finds that humans tend to perceive people of other races than their own to all look alike:

This phenomenon is known mainly as the cross-race effect, but is also called the own-race effect, other-race effect, own race bias or interracial-face-recognition-deficit.[91]

In 1990, Mullen reported finding evidence that the other-race effect is larger among White subjects than among African American subjects, whereas Brigham and Williamson (1979, cited in Shepherd, 1981) obtained the opposite pattern. However, it should be noted that it is difficult to measure the true influence of the cross-race effect. D. Stephen Lindsay and colleagues note that results in these studies could be due to intrinsic difficulty in recognizing the faces presented, an actual difference in the size of cross-race effect between the two test groups, or some combination of these two factors. Shepherd reviewed studies that found better performance on both African American[95] and White faces,[92] and yet Shepherd also reviewed other studies in which no difference was found.[93][94] Overall, Shepherd reported a reliable positive correlation between the size of the effect and the amount of interaction subjects had with members of the other race. This correlation reflects the fact that African American subjects, who performed equally well on faces of both races in Shepherd's study, almost always responded with the highest possible self-rating of amount of interaction with white people (M = 4.75; 5 being the most interaction with people of that race, 1 being the least), whereas their white counterparts both displayed a larger other-race effect and reported less other-race interaction (M = 2.13). This difference in rating was found statistically reliable, £(30) = 7.86, p < .01.[95]

The cross-race effect seems to appear in humans around 6 months of age. Cross-race effects can be changed from early childhood through adulthood through interaction with people of other races. Other-race experience in own- versus other-race face processing is a major influence on the cross-race effect (O'Toole et al., 1991; Slone et al., 2000; Walker & Tanaka, 2003). In a series of studies, Walker and colleagues revealed that participants with greater other-race experience were consistently more accurate at discriminating between other-race faces than were participants with less other-race experience (Walker & Tanaka, 2003; Walker & Hewstone, 2006a,b; 2007). Many current models of the cross-race effect assume that holistic face processing mechanisms are more fully engaged when viewing own-race faces compared to other-race faces.

The own-race effect appears to be related to increased ability to extract information about the spatial relationships between different facial features.[96] Daniel T. Levin writes that a deficit occurs when viewing people of another race because visual information specifying race takes up mental attention at the expense of individuating information when recognizing faces of other races.[98] Further research using perceptual tasks could shed light on the specific cognitive processes involved in the other-race effect.[95] Bernstein et al. (2007) demonstrate that the own-race effect likely extends beyond racial membership into in-group versus out-group concepts. It was shown that categorizing somebody by the university he or she attends results in similar results compared to studies about the own-race effect. Hugenberg, Miller, and Claypool (2007) shed light on overcoming the own-race effect. They performed a study in which they introduced people to the concept of the own-race effect before presenting them faces and found that if people were made aware of the own-race effect prior to the experiment, the test subjects showed significantly less if any own-race effect.

Studies on adults have also shown sex differences in face recognition. Men tend to recognize fewer faces of women than women do, whereas there are no sex differences with regard to male faces.[99]

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Evolutionary development of facial perception:

According to David A. Leopold and Gillian Rhodes, facial perception played a major role in the advancement of human social exchange. It should be disclaimed that experts question if advanced facial recognition came about through evolution to fit social needs or if primate sociality simply exploited existing facial fluency. Facial perception provides key information about a person's emotional state, racial background, attentional direction, development, and also their identity. Experiments conducted with several different species of animals suggest that neural specialization for facial recognition emerged early in vertebrate evolution. The ability to perceive faces comes with several evolutionary advantages. Being able to recognize a familiar face allows one to retrieve memories about that individual that help determine future behavior. For example, recognizing a friendly face could allude to teamwork to achieve a goal whereas recognizing someone as a threat could remind one to stay away from that person. Humans also tend to be better at recognizing faces that correspond to their own race compared to those of other races. Humans, along with many species of apes, are capable of self-recognition, whereas evidence for other primates possessing this ability is minimal.