Early diversity crucial for social cohesion, claims new research

Early diversity crucial for social cohesion, claims new research. Research from the University of Sheffield's Department of Psychology has revealed that exposing infants to faces from racial groups other than their own improves their ability to recognise and identify individuals from different racial groups. The 'Other Race Effect' (ORE) is a recognised phenomenon among infants from various racial groups, whereby they lose their ability to distinguish the faces of people from different races to their own, due to a lack of exposure. This ability is typically present at six months, but is lost by the age of nine months, leading to a compromised perception of people outside of their own ethnic group. Lead researcher, Dr Jane Herbert, explained: "Shortly after we are born, we can tell which faces we have seen before, regardless of whether they are from our race or even our species. During the infancy period, the face processing system becomes 'tuned' to the type of faces that we see regularly. So if you grow up in an environment where you only experience a particular type of face (e.g., just Caucasian, just Asian, just African) then your brain begins to specialise in this type of face.