| Popis: |
Infants sometimes differentially attend to faces of different races, but how this tendency develops across infancy and might vary for infants growing up with different experiences with racial diversity remain unclear. The present study examined the role of experiences with racial diversity on infants’ visual attention to different racial groups (specifically, own-race vs. other-race groups) via a large-scale study of infants (N = 203; Mage: 6.9 months, range: 3-14 months; 70% White, 8% Asian, 5% Black, 12% Biracial/Multiracial, 4% unreported; 14% Hispanic, 86% Non-Hispanic) from across the United States. We tested the role of two forms of racial diversity: that of infants’ social networks (reported by parents) and that of infants’ neighborhoods (obtained from US Census data). Regardless of age, infants looked longer at other-race faces than own-race faces, but this tendency was moderated by the racial diversity of infants’ social networks. Infants with more diverse networks looked equivalently to own-race and other-race faces, whereas those with less diverse networks looked longer at other-race faces. In contrast, infants’ looking behavior was not moderated by the diversity of their neighborhoods. Thus, exposure to racial diversity in infants’ immediate social networks changes how infants look to faces of different races, illustrating the context-dependent nature of the development of infants’ attention to race. |
