TY  - JOUR
AU  - Yong, Min Hooi
AU  - Lim, Xue Li
AU  - Schaefer, Alexandre
TI  - How do Asians perceive Caucasian eyes? Electrophysiological correlates of perceiving racial differences from the eyes region of the face
JO  - Neuroscience letters
VL  - 720
SN  - 0304-3940
CY  - Amsterdam [u.a.]
PB  - Elsevier Science
M1  - FZJ-2020-01459
SP  - 134759 -
PY  - 2020
AB  - Past research has found that several brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were sensitive to the perception of ethnic differences displayed on human faces. This body of research suggests that the phenomenon of "race perception" involves a cascade of cognitive processes that includes both automatic and overt attentional mechanisms. However, most of these studies used stimuli depicting whole faces rather than stimuli depicting separate facial features. Therefore, it is still largely unknown if ERP responses to racial differences are the result of a holistic processing of the whole face, or whether they can be accounted for by the perception of single facial features. To address this issue, we examined whether a single facial feature, the eyes region, can provide sufficient information to trigger known ERP correlates of race perception such as the P2, the N400 and the Late Positive Complex (LPC). Specifically, we showed pictures depicting only the eyes region of Caucasian and Asian faces to a sample of Asian participants. We found that the P2 was larger for other-race (OR) compared to same-race (SR) eyes, and that the N400 was larger for SR compared to OR eyes. The effects on the P2 may suggest an enhanced vigilance response to OR eyes whereas the N400 effect could reflect a signal of familiarity triggered by SR eyes. These results indicate that a specific facial feature, the eyes region, can account for known effects of race perception on early brain potentials. Our findings also indicate that well-known early neural correlates of race perception can be triggered in the absence of a holistic processing of the whole face.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:31952988
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000515431600005
DO  - DOI:10.1016/j.neulet.2020.134759
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/874480
ER  -