Infants show apparent awareness of ethnic differences

New research findings help advance our understanding of social cognition and social development. Researchers studied 40 Hispanic infants and 37 non-Hispanic white infants, all 11 months old. The researchers showed them the faces of 18 young women they did not know on a computer screen. Recording the infants’ eye movements with technology that can track where a viewer is looking, and for how long, the results showed that both Hispanic and white infants looked longer at African-American faces than Hispanic faces, longer at African-American faces than white faces and longer at Hispanic faces than white faces.