Overcoming the other-race effect in infancy with multisensory redundancy: 10-12-month-olds discriminate dynamic other-race faces producing speech.

We tested 4-6- and 10-12-month-old infants to investigate whether the often-reported decline in infant sensitivity to other-race faces may reflect responsiveness to static or dynamic/silent faces rather than a general process of perceptual narrowing. Across three experiments, we tested discrimination of either dynamic own-race or other-race faces which were either accompanied by a speech syllable, no sound, or a non-speech sound. Results indicated that 4-6- and 10-12-month-old infants discriminated own-race as well as other-race faces accompanied by a speech syllable, that only the 10-12-month-olds discriminated silent own-race faces, and that 4-6-month-old infants discriminated own-race and other-race faces accompanied by a non-speech sound but that 10-12-month-old infants only discriminated own-race faces accompanied by a non-speech sound. Overall, the results suggest that the ORE reported to date reflects infant responsiveness to static or dynamic/silent faces rather than a general process of perceptual narrowing.