Time course of the brain response to own- and other-race faces across the lifespan

What is it about?

We are typically better at recognizing and telling apart individual faces belonging to our ethnic group compared with faces belonging to other ethnic groups. This phenomenon, known as the “other-race” effect, has been investigated for almost twenty years using the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique, which allows uncovering the time course of the brain response to own- and other-race faces. In this article, we reviewed the knowledge gained so far from the application of this technique to the examination of the other-race effect in both developmental and adult populations. We attempted to relate the ERP findings to the mechanisms and the theories of the other-race effect across the lifespan.

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Photo by Joanjo Pavon on Unsplash

Photo by Joanjo Pavon on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article provides an up-to-date comprehensive review of the ERP findings related to own- and other-race face processing and it is the only encompassing the human lifespan. We highlight a paucity of studies in the developmental population and in ethnic populations other than Caucasian or Asian. We also note that results from studies conducted on a single own-race population generally converge with the ones from cross-racial investigations.