An own-age bias in age estimation of faces in children and adults.

The aim of the present study was to assess the occurence of an own-age bias on age estimation performance (better performance for faces from the same age range as that of the beholder) by using an experimental design inspired from research on the own-race effect. The age of participants (10 to 14 year old children and 20 to 30 year old adults) was an independent factor that was crossed with the age of the stimuli (faces of 10 to 14 year old children and faces of 20 to 30 year old adults), the dependent measure being the accuracy of age estimation. There were 30 participants in each age group. An interaction between the two factors was expected. A two-way 2 (age of the participants)x 2 (age of the stimuli) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor was carried out on the accuracy scores. This analysis revealed a main effect of age of participants and of age of stimuli, and an interaction between these two factors. Children's performance was less accurate when estimating the age of adults' faces compared with children's faces. However, in both age groups, accuracy was better for children's faces than for adults' faces.