Children's Ability to Recognize Other Children's Faces

Facial recognition ability was studied with 288 children from 4 grades--first, second, third, and sixth--who also varied by sex race, and school type, the last being segregated or integrated. Children judged whether each of 40 pictures of children's faces had been present in a set of 20 pictures viewed earlier. Facial recognition ability increased significantly with each grade but leveled off between ages 8 and 11. Blacks' performance is significantly better than whites', and blacks are better at recognizing faces of whites than whites are at recognizing blacks. Children from an integrated school show smaller differences recognizing black or white faces than children from segregated schools, but the effect appears only for children of the integrated school who also live in mixed-race neighborhoods.