The influence of language categorization on face perception

Abstract

As the world experiences increased international mobility, we encounter those from different racial, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Therefore it is increasingly crucial to examine the ways we categorize and perceive other people. The main objective of this dissertation is to examine whether language is a dimension of social categorization, and whether this affects face perception. We also examined whether language categorization interacts with race categories, and whether this interaction affects the perception of other race faces. These issues were investigated in three studies. Firstly, we used behavioral and event-related potential techniques in an oddball paradigm to test whether language categorization affects visual face perception. We demonstrated that indeed, language is used as a social category, and this categorization affects the early stages of visual perception of faces. Secondly, we examined how language interacts with race in creating social categories. By using a popular psychological paradigm called the Memory Confusion Paradigm, we establish the robustness of language categorization, and the malleability of race categorization when crossed with different language contexts. In our final study, our aim was to understand whether native and foreign accents affect the perception and recognition of other-race faces. In summary, this dissertation has examined the effect of language on face perception, and has established that language categorization is a strong and robust effect that influences face perception.