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COVID-19 has modified numerous aspects of children's social environments. Many children are now spoken to through a mask. There is little empirical evidence attesting to the effects of masked language input on language processing. In addition, not much is known about the effects of clear masks (i.e., transparent face shields) versus opaque masks on language comprehension in children. In the current study, 2-year-old infants were tested on their ability to recognize familiar spoken words in three conditions: words presented with no mask, words presented through a clear mask, and words presented through an opaque mask. Infants were able to recognize familiar words presented without a mask and when hearing words through opaque masks, but not when hearing words through clear masks. Findings suggest that the ability of infants to recover spoken language input through masks varies depending on the surface properties of the mask.

Age-related differences in explicit and implicit racial biases in Black Cameroonians (N = 187, 94 females) were investigated using a cross-sectional design. Participants ranged in age from 3 to 30 years, and were from middle-to-high income families in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Biases were assessed by comparing attitudes toward Blacks with those toward Whites and Chinese. Implicit pro-Black/anti-other-race (White and Chinese) biases were present at age 4, in contrast to anti-Black/pro-other-race biases, which were observed among 9- to 30-year-olds. In addition, explicit pro-Black/anti-other-race biases that were present at age 4 were no longer evident by age 7. These findings provide a detailed picture of age-related differences in racial biases in an understudied part of the world that can inform theories regarding the development of racial biases, as well as efforts to reduce such biases.

Bilingual children have been shown to differ from monolingual children in several domains of human cognition. Comparatively few studies have investigated social-interactional processes in bilingual populations. Here, we investigated whether monolingual and bilingual children demonstrate similar susceptibility to an aspect of social functioning with broad societal reach: racial bias. We measured both implicit and explicit biases against African race individuals in 2 groups of monolingual preschoolers (native speakers of English or Chinese) and in 2 groups of English-Chinese bilingual preschoolers (tested in English or Chinese; total N = 160). We found that monolingual children demonstrated greater implicit bias against African race individuals than bilingual children, independent of their native language. Monolingual Chinese children demonstrated greater explicit bias than bilingual children, although monolingual English children's explicit bias scores did not differ from those of bilingual children. Findings are discussed in terms of cognitive and experiential mechanisms that may link bilingualism and racial bias.

Perceptual narrowing occurs in human infants for other-race faces. A paired-comparison task measuring infant looking time was used to investigate the hypothesis that adding emotional expressiveness to other-race faces would help infants break through narrowing and reinstate other-race face recognition. Experiment 1 demonstrated narrowing for White infants viewing neutral Asian faces: whereas 3-month-olds differentiated Asian faces, 6-month-olds did not. Experiment 2 showed that White 6-month-olds differentiated the same Asian faces depicted with angry or happy expressions. Experiments 3 and 4 yielded comparable results for 6- and 9-month-olds tested with Black faces (i.e., narrowing with neutral faces, reinstatement of sensitivity when the faces were presented with emotion). Experiment 5 showed that White 6-month-olds did not differentiate inverted angry or happy Asian faces, and that White 9-month-olds did not differentiate inverted angry or happy Black faces. Looking time during familiarization did not differ for upright neutral and emotional faces, indicating that the expressions did not yield more salient stimuli. Also, consistent with the inversion findings, analyses of the low-level image properties as well as equivalent pairwise similarity ratings obtained from White adults for the neutral and emotional faces indicated that the expressions did not simply create more discriminable stimuli. Without support for the lower-level accounts, we discuss the possibility that the infants processed the communicative intent of the expressions. Because angry faces pose threat and happy faces invite affiliation, expression may create motivation to individuate. Overall, the data suggest that early perceptual-social linkage in face representation can arise via a social-to-perceptual pathway.

Bilingualism exerts early and pervasive effects on cognition, observable in infancy. Thus far, investigations of infant bilingual cognition have focused on sensitivity to visual memory, executive function, and linguistic sensitivity. Much less research has focused on how bilingualism impacts processing of social cues. The present study sought to investigate whether bilingualism modulates the expression of one aspect of social processing: early racial bias. Using a gaze-following paradigm, we investigated whether 18- to 20-month-old monolingual and bilingual infants favored their own race. Results demonstrated that monolingual infants favored their own race in following a model whose direction of gaze signaled an event. In contrast, bilingual infants demonstrated race-neutral gaze-following patterns, relying more heavily on the reliability of the behavior of the model over race. Findings suggest that bilingualism may have protective effects against the early emergence of racial bias.

We investigated the developmental courses of both implicit and explicit racial biases in relation to the perceived social status of outgroups. We did so by assessing these biases among Chinese participants (N = 200, age range from 4- to 19-year-olds) toward 2 different other-race groups that differ in terms of perceived social status (i.e., Whites and Blacks). At the youngest age, children showed both implicit anti-White and anti-Black bias at similar levels. However, these biases had different patterns of age-related change: implicit anti-Black bias remained strong and stable over time, whereas implicit anti-White bias declined after age 10. For explicit bias, children showed a decline in anti-Black and anti-White bias. Implicit and explicit biases were uncorrelated at all ages. The observed age-related changes demonstrate that it is possible for patterns of biases toward different races to diverge with age, and that perceived social status may contribute to the differential developmental patterns.

This research investigated the relation between racial categorization and implicit racial bias in majority and minority children. Chinese and Indian 3- to 7-year-olds from Singapore (N = 158) categorized Chinese and Indian faces by race and had their implicit and explicit racial biases measured. Majority Chinese children, but not minority Indian children, showed implicit bias favoring own race. Regardless of ethnicity, children's racial categorization performance correlated positively with implicit racial bias. Also, Chinese children, but not Indian children, displayed explicit bias favoring own race. Furthermore, children's explicit bias was unrelated to racial categorization performance and implicit bias. The findings support a perceptual--social linkage in the emergence of implicit racial bias and have implications for designing programs to promote interracial harmony.

This document is an introduction to a special edition of the journal Gramarye, which features papers from a conference on Giambattista Basile. The conference explored Basile's work and legacy, with topics including the reception of Basile in the Low Countries, female resistance in his tales, the structure of his collection, and his engagement with Ovid's poetry. The document also includes reviews of new publications, such as Angela Carter's Pyrotechnics and Jack Zipes' translation of Hermynia Zur Mühlen's political tales. The introduction concludes with information about upcoming events and reflections on the need for new narratives of inclusion, justice, and forgiveness in the face of war and climate crisis. [Extracted from the article]

Although most of the faces we encounter daily are moving ones, much of what we know about face processing and its development is based on studies using static faces that emphasize holistic processing as the hallmark of mature face processing. Here the authors examined the effects of facial movements on face processing developmentally in children (8-year-olds), adolescents (12-year-olds), and adults (20-year-olds). In particular, the composite face effect was used to measure the influence of facial movements on part-based versus holistic processing after participants had viewed either a moving or static face in a within-subject design. Experiment 1 examined elastic facial movement (i.e., blinking and chewing). The results showed that children, adolescents, and adults exhibited a significantly smaller composite effect after viewing a moving face than after viewing a static face. This result indicates that elastic facial movement facilitates part-based face processing from at least 8 years of age onward. Experiment 2 examined rigid facial movement (i.e., head turning) and revealed that it too facilitates part-based face processing in children, adolescents, and adults. The results taken together suggest that contrary to the prevailing view, facial movements facilitate part-based, not holistic, face processing in children, adolescents, and adults. The findings call for revision in the conventional way of thinking about what constitutes the developmental trajectory toward mature face processing and also point to the importance of using more naturalistic moving face stimuli to study face processing and its development.

The visual preferences of infants for adult versus infant faces were investigated. Caucasian 3.5- and 6-month-olds were presented with Caucasian adult vs. infant face pairs and Asian adult vs. infant face pairs, in both upright and inverted orientations. Both age groups showed a visual preference for upright adult over infant faces when the faces were Caucasian, but not when they were Asian. The preference is unlikely to have arisen because of low-level perceptual features because: (1) no preference was observed for the inverted stimuli, (2) no differences were observed in adult similarity ratings of the upright infant-adult face pairs from the two races, and (3) no differences between the infant and adult faces were observed across races in an image-based analysis of salience. The findings are discussed in terms of the social attributes of faces that are learned from experience and what this implies for developmental accounts of a recognition advantage for adult faces in particular and models of face processing more generally.

Two studies with preschool-age children examined the effectiveness of perceptual individuation training at reducing racial bias (Study 1, N = 32; Study 2, N = 56). We found that training preschool-age children to individuate other-race faces resulted in a reduction in implicit racial bias while mere exposure to other-race faces produced no such effect. We also showed that neither individuation training nor mere exposure reduced explicit racial bias. Theoretically, our findings provide strong evidence for a causal link between individual-level face processing and implicit racial bias, and are consistent with the newly proposed perceptual-social linkage hypothesis. Practically, our findings suggest that offering children experiences that allow them to increase their expertise in processing individual other-race faces will help reduce their implicit racial bias.

THE VARIATIONS PATRICK LANGLEY 464pp. Fitzcarraldo Editions. Paperback, 14.99 [pounds sterling]. PATRICK LANGLEY'S haunting debut novel, Arkady (TLS, May 11, 2018), an evocation of a dystopian cityscape, was at once [...]