The other-race effect of pupil contagion in infancy

TL;DR

This study shows that 5–6-month-old infants show pupil contagion to unfamiliar-race faces, suggesting an early other-race effect in social perception.

Contribution

The study provides the first evidence of the other-race effect on pupil contagion in infants using whole-face stimuli.

Findings

5–6-month-old infants showed pupil contagion to both upright and inverted unfamiliar-race faces.

7–8-month-old infants only showed pupil contagion to upright unfamiliar-race faces.

The face inversion effect does not occur in 5–6-month-old infants for pupil contagion.

Abstract

Pupil contagion refers to the observer’s pupil-diameter changes in response to changes in the pupil diameter of others. Recent studies on the other-race effect on pupil contagion have mainly focused on using eye region images as stimuli, revealing the effect in adults but not in infants. To address this research gap, the current study used whole-face images as stimuli to assess the pupil-diameter response of 5–6-month-old and 7–8-month-old infants to changes in the pupil-diameter of both upright and inverted unfamiliar-race faces. The study initially hypothesized that there would be no pupil contagion in either upright or inverted unfamiliar-race faces, based on our previous finding of pupil contagion occurring only in familiar-race faces among 5–6-month-old infants. Notably, the current results indicated that 5–6-month-old infants exhibited pupil contagion in both upright and inverted unfamiliar-race faces, while 7–8-month-old infants showed this effect only in upright unfamiliar-race faces. These results demonstrate that the face inversion effect of pupil contagion does not occur in 5–6-month-old infants, thereby suggesting the presence of the other-race effect in pupil contagion among this age group. Overall, this study provides the first evidence of the other-race effect on infants’ pupil contagion using face stimuli.

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