Children's and Adults' P100 and N170 Responses to Own- and Other-Race Face Categories and Identities

Despite the early emergence of differences in processing own- and other-race faces, examinations of the corresponding neural correlates prior to adulthood remain limited. The present study examined 5- to 10-year-olds' and adults' P100 and N170 responses to own- and other-race faces during an identity-processing task and a race-categorization task. There were developmental changes in discriminability and response times in both task conditions. Stimulus face race and task condition showed independent effects on adults' P100 responses, with greater mean P100 amplitude for other- than own-race faces and greater mean P100 amplitude when categorizing faces by race than when processing face identity. Task condition alone influenced 5- to 7-year-olds' P100 responses, with greater mean P100 amplitude in the left hemisphere when categorizing faces by race than when processing face identity. Neither stimulus face race nor task condition, nor their interaction, influenced N170 responses in adults. However, 5- to 7-year-olds showed shorter peak N170 latencies to own-race than other-race face categories, and 8- to 10-year-olds showed larger P100 to N170 peak-to-peak amplitude responses for other-race compared to own-race face identities.