Language familiarity influences own‐race face recognition in 9‐ and 12‐month‐old infants

During their first year, infants attune to the faces and language(s) that are frequent in environment. The present study investigates impact of language familiarity on how French-learning 9- 12-month-olds recognize own-race faces. In Experiment 1, were familiarized with talking face a Caucasian bilingual German-French speaker reciting nursery rhyme French (native condition) or German (non-native condition). test phase, infants’ recognition was tested by presenting picture speaker's they with, side novel face. At 9 12 months, neither native condition nor ones non-native clearly recognized 2, we still face, along auditory speech stream. This time, both had been but only if she spoke language. shows at least from months age, modulates way recognized.