At the Intersection of Social Systems, Perception, and Representation: Going Beyond Perceiving Faces and Languages

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Evidence from face and language processing literature indicated shared mechanisms such as synaptic pruning, early experience, and social motivations (e.g., Hadley et al., 20214; Maurer & Werker, 2014) in shaping the development of perceptual specialization. Researchers in our symposium are taking these bodies of literature further by incorporating two key elements that provide a greater characterization of perceptual-social development. First, presentations will highlight the ‘multiplicity of input’ factor. That is, across the globe Multiracial, Multicultural, and Multilingual populations are rapidly increasing, motivating developmental researchers to ask questions about the way developmental contexts cross-culturally influence perceptual and representational processes. Second, presenters will provide evidence that bridge perceptual processes (for faces and languages) and social biases. Specifically, each presenter will demonstrate the way one’s developmental context relates to early and later developing race and linguistic bias. Each paper includes data from cross-cultural populations. The first paper offers data highlighting foundations of stereotypical responding in infants learning from familiar- and unfamiliar-race faces. The second paper includes evidence of the link between race categorization of Multiracial faces and implicit racial biases in preschool-age children. The third paper introduces evidence of the way cultural acceptance of Multilingualism influences raciolinguistic perceptual biases in bilingual speakers. These three papers offer exciting new directions for developmental researchers to integrate and expand the breadth of our knowledge about the onset of biases and related cornerstones found in racial and linguistic perceptual-social development.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Charisse B. Pickron, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Discussant

• Maria Mercedes Arredondo, University of Texas at Austin

Individual Presentations

• Biased Stereotypical Responding in Infants - Presenting Author: Naiqi G Xiao, McMaster University; Shaoying Liu, Zhejiang Sci-tech University; Paul Quinn; Kang Lee, University of Toronto

• Implicit Racial Bias Predicts Categorization Bias Among Preschool-Age Children: Evidence from China and Canada - Presenting Author: Miao Qian, University of Detroit Mercy; Genyue Fu, Hangzhou Normal University; Alison L Chasteen, University of Toronto

• The Role of Societal-Level Differences in Multilingualism on Speech Perception - Presenting Author: Ethan Kutlu, University of Iowa