Abstract
People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of another race. This so-called 'other-race' effect is present in adults but also in children as young as three years old. It can be reversed by subsequent experience with new types of faces, suggesting 'plasticity' of the face recognition system during childhood. Here we tested adopted children aged from 6 to 14 in a task inspired by the 'Warrington Recognition Memory Test', to assess the impact of the time spent in Belgium and the age of adoption on the reversibility of the effect. As predicted, adoptees behaved exactly like a control group of Belgian participants, identifying the Caucasian faces better than the Asian ones. However, different patterns of results depending on the age of adoption have been found. More surprisingly, unlike previous studies, both groups did not showed any quantitative increase of the 'other-race' effect with age. Overall, results suggested that 60 months in a new environment are sufficient to reverse the effect if the adoption happens before the child is 3 years old. Studies included that larger samples are needed to clarify these hypotheses.
