Student Presenter(s): Kaylah Dewar, Sebastian Lopez, Michael Rosen, Fabrice Cyprien
Faculty Mentor: Nicole Calma-Roddin
Department: Behavioral Sciences
School/College: College of Arts and Sciences, Long Island

Previous studies have revealed that, in our society, people tend to have implicit bias, which affects the way individuals perceive and interact with others. The purpose of this study is to explore how race impacts attention. Previous findings indicated that White participants have a biased attention towards Black faces compared to White faces (Trawalter et al., 2008). Prior research has interpreted this as being related to threat perception, in line with previous studies of biologically threatening stimuli. We will ask participants to engage in the dot-probe paradigm, where two faces are shown to participants, followed by a dot where one of the faces has been. Afterwards, the participant must identify where the dot is located. We will measure the speed of their reaction time of finding the dot. A faster reaction time means that participants’ attention was already focused on the face that had been in this position. With an overwhelming amount of prior research where participants were White and the target faces in the experiment were only Black or White, our study will take a more inclusive approach and look at not only Black vs. White faces, but will both add Asian faces to the study and have a more diverse group of participants. We believe Asian individuals will garner the least amount of attention amongst the three groups, while Black individuals will garner more attention than the other groups.