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A Familial Factor in the Development of Face Recognition Deficits
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology
Abstract
The face is probably the single most important visual object. It is the main cue for identifying familiar people and crucial in nonverbal communication. Face recognition can be demonstrated in newborn babies, suggesting that face recognition is to some degree 'hard-wired' in the brain. Also, neurological disease can selectively disrupt the ability to recognize faces. Apart from acquired face recognition deficits, developmental cases have been reported. This study presents a family in which the father and two of his daughters are very poor at recognizing faces, demonstrating for the first time a familial factor in developmental face recognition deficit.
... Both a questionnaire-based screening method (Kennerknecht et al. 2006Kennerknecht, Ho et al. 2008;Kennerknecht 2021) and behavioral tests (Bowles et al. 2009) have estimated the prevalence of CP at 1.8-2.9% in the general population, providing a global estimate of tens of millions of CP individuals (CPs). Familial studies (McConachie 1976;De Haan 1999;Galaburda and Duchaine 2003;Dobel et al. 2007;Duchaine et al. 2007;Grueter et al. 2007;Kennerknecht et al. 2006Kennerknecht et al. , 2007Kennerknecht, Pluempe et al. 2008;Schmalzl et al. 2008;Lee et al. 2010;Johnen et al. 2014) and twin studies (Polk et al. 2007;McKone and Palermo 2010;Wilmer et al. 2010;Zhu et al. 2010) suggest that CP and face recognition abilities are highly heritable. In pedigree analysis, a simple autosomal dominant mode of inheritance has been observed (De Haan 1999;Kennerknecht et al. 2006;Duchaine et al. 2007;Grueter et al. 2007;Schmalzl et al. 2008;Lee et al. 2010), indicating that mutations in a single gene can lead to face recognition defects. ...
... Familial studies (McConachie 1976;De Haan 1999;Galaburda and Duchaine 2003;Dobel et al. 2007;Duchaine et al. 2007;Grueter et al. 2007;Kennerknecht et al. 2006Kennerknecht et al. , 2007Kennerknecht, Pluempe et al. 2008;Schmalzl et al. 2008;Lee et al. 2010;Johnen et al. 2014) and twin studies (Polk et al. 2007;McKone and Palermo 2010;Wilmer et al. 2010;Zhu et al. 2010) suggest that CP and face recognition abilities are highly heritable. In pedigree analysis, a simple autosomal dominant mode of inheritance has been observed (De Haan 1999;Kennerknecht et al. 2006;Duchaine et al. 2007;Grueter et al. 2007;Schmalzl et al. 2008;Lee et al. 2010), indicating that mutations in a single gene can lead to face recognition defects. ...
Face recognition is important for both visual and social cognition. While prosopagnosia or face blindness has been known for seven decades and face specific neurons for half a century, the molecular genetic mechanism is not clear. Here we report results after 17 years of research with classic genetics and modern genomics. From a large family with 18 congenital prosopagnosia (CP) members with obvious difficulties in face recognition in daily life, we uncovered a fully cosegregating private mutation in the MCTP2 gene which encodes a calcium binding transmembrane protein expressed in the brain. After screening through cohorts of 6589, we found more CPs and their families, allowing detection of more CP associated mutations in MCTP2. Face recognition differences were detected between 14 carriers with the frameshift mutation S80fs in MCTP2 and 19 non-carrying volunteers. 6 families including one with 10 members showed the S80fs-CP correlation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging found association of impaired recognition of individual faces by MCTP2 mutant CPs with reduced repetition suppression to repeated facial identities in the right fusiform face area. Our results have revealed genetic predisposition of MCTP2 mutations in CP, 76 years after the initial report of prosopagnosia and 47 years after the report of the first CP. This is the first time a gene required for a higher form of visual social cognition was found in humans.
... Must meet CFMT and FFT criteria (Tian et al. 2020) NA NA NA No Criteria Variety of screenings, but must score > -1 SD on old/new ) > -2 SDs > -2 SDs NA NA All met CFMT and PI20 impairment > -2Ds > -2 SDs No Criteria NA Impairment on PI20 and CFMT (Wilcockson et al. 2020) NA >-2 SDs No Criteria >-2 SDs Must meet CFMT and FFT criteria have this condition fail to score more than 2 SDs below the neurotypical CFMT mean (Bate et al., 2019a;Burns et al., 2014a;Murray & Bate, 2020;Ulrich et al., 2014), with similar misses apparent when attempting to diagnose DP using the FFT (25% missed, Bate et al., 2019a) and CFPT (80% missed, Bate et al., 2019a). These issues have historical precedence, with one of the earliest papers noting a self-identified case that failed to perform abnormally poorly on face processing tasks (De Haan, 1999). In our experience, these cases appear indistinguishable when interviewed from those who do meet criteria: they commonly fail to recognize people personally known to them, they mix up characters when watching TV shows or films, and they try to recognize people by distinctive features, such as a large nose or bushy eyebrows. ...
... In our experience, these cases appear indistinguishable when interviewed from those who do meet criteria: they commonly fail to recognize people personally known to them, they mix up characters when watching TV shows or films, and they try to recognize people by distinctive features, such as a large nose or bushy eyebrows. Yet when it comes to assessing their complaints objectively, we are unable to, at least from the perspective of single-case criteria, confirm a diagnosis 1 (Bate et al., 2019a;Burns et al., 2014a;De Haan, 1999;Murray & Bate, 2020). So far, researchers have suggested that these individuals do not suffer from prosopagnosia, but may simply have a failure in meta-cognition (Arizpe et al., 2019;Bate et al. 2019a), i.e., they are unable to accurately judge that their face recognition skills appear perfectly normal, at least when assessed on tasks such as the CFMT and FFT. ...
Developmental prosopagnosia is characterised by severe, lifelong difficulties when recognising facial identity. Unfortunately, the most common diagnostic assessment (Cambridge Face Memory Test) misses 50-65% of individuals who believe that they have this condition. This results in such excluded cases’ absence from scientific knowledge, effect sizes of impairment potentially overestimated, treatment efficacy underrated, and may elicit in them a negative experience of research. To estimate their symptomology and group level impairments in face processing, we recruited a large cohort who believes that they have prosopagnosia. Matching prior reports, 56% did not meet criteria on the Cambridge Face Memory Test. However, the severity of their prosopagnosia symptoms and holistic perception deficits were comparable to those who did meet criteria. Excluded cases also exhibited face perception and memory impairments that were roughly one standard deviation below neurotypical norms, indicating the presence of objective problems. As the prosopagnosia index correctly classified virtually every case, we propose it should be the primary method for providing a diagnosis, prior to subtype categorisation. We present researchers with a plan on how they can analyse these excluded prosopagnosia cases in their future work without negatively impacting their traditional findings. We anticipate such inclusion will enhance scientific knowledge, more accurately estimate effect sizes of impairments and treatments, and identify commonalities and distinctions between these different forms of prosopagnosia. Owing to their atypicalities in visual perception, we recommend that the prosopagnosia index should be used to screen out potential prosopagnosia cases from broader vision research.
... and task dependent, i.e. self-report was more accurate when behavioural tasks were low in complexity and objective ( Zell & Krizan, 2014). In an early report on DP, De Haan (1999) urged caution when interpreting selfreported FRA after noting that some individuals score within typical range on objective face processing tasks, despite reporting problems in everyday life. Conversely, other authors have recently shown that naive participants are frequently surprised when they find out their face recognition is poorer than what they had originally thought (Bowles et al., 2009;Grueter et al., 2007). ...
... In summary, the evidence presented here suggests that young naive participants have moderate insight into their own FRA, but those who previously received feedback on their extraordinary performance (the SRs) are reasonably well informed about their face processing skills and can estimate it with higher degree of precision. This corroborates most reports suggesting that people have only moderate insight into their FRA Bowles et al., 2009;Grueter et al., 2007;Haan, 1999;Palermo et al., 2016). Correlations improve when the studied population includes those already known to be poor (Shah et al., 2015), or good (this study) are included, but this may be because these individuals already 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 DOI: 10.1177/1747021818776145 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 ...
A reliable self-report measure to assess the broad spectrum of face recognition ability (FRA) from developmental prosopagnosia (DP) to super-recognition would make a valuable contribution to initial screening of large populations. We examined the performance of 96 naive participants and seven super-recognisers (SRs) using a range of face and object processing tasks and a newly developed 20-item questionnaire, the Stirling Face Recognition Scale (SFRS). Overall, our findings suggest that young adults have only moderate insight into their FRA, but those who have been previously informed of their (exceptional) performance, the SRs, estimate their FRA accurately. Principal component analysis of SFRS yielded two components. One loads on questions about low ability and correlates with perceptual tasks, and one loads on questions about high FRA and correlates with memory for faces. We recommend that self-report measures of FRA should be used in addition to behavioural testing, to allow for cross-study comparisons, until new, more reliable instruments of self-report are developed. However, self-report measures should not be solely relied upon to identify highly skilled individuals. Implications of these results for theory and applied practice are discussed.
... [19][20][21]; for reviews, see [22][23]. Recently, it has been suggested that there is a strong heritable component to face recognition in typical development [24][25][26] as well as in developmental prosopagnosia -a condition characterized by deficient face recognition ability in the absence of acquired head injury [27][28][29][30]. Therefore, there is good reason to suspect that difficulties in facial identity recognition might be part of the BAP (an idea that has been previously suggested, [31]). ...
... This proposal is consistent with two recent studies with large samples of typically developing adult twins that have found evidence for a genetic factor underlying face recognition where performance on face recognition tests were correlated more closely in monozygotic than dizygotic twin pairs [25][26]. These studies are also in line with several studies suggesting that developmental prosopagnosia runs in families [27][28][29][30]. Despite the strong genetic contribution to face recognition, the twin studies, not surprisingly, also show that there is a contribution of the environment [24]. ...
... While such cases are purported to have facespecific problems, they also suffer some non-face difficulties (Burns et al., 2019a), coupled with largely intact low-level visual and intellectual functions (Jones & Tranel, 2001). Further, there is evidence of a genetic basis for the condition (see Grueter et al., 2007), which could explain a strong familial link (e.g., Behrmann & Avidan, 2005;Bentin et al., 1999;De Haan, 1999;Duchaine, 2000). ...
When people recognize faces, they normally move their eyes so that their first fixation is in the optimal location for efficient perceptual processing. This location is found just below the centre-point between the eyes. This type of attentional bias could be partly innate, but also an inevitable developmental process that aids our ability to recognize faces. We investigated whether a group of people with developmental prosopagnosia would also demonstrate neurotypical first fixation locations when recognizing faces during an eye-tracking task. We found evidence that adults with prosopagnosia had atypically heterogeneous first fixations in comparison to controls. However, differences were limited to the vertical, but not horizontal, plane of the face. We interpret these findings by suggesting that subtle changes to face-based eye movement patterns in developmental prosopagnosia may underpin their face recognition impairments, and suggest future work is still needed to address this possibility.
... Along with their difficulties in managing faces in everyday life, the family members with CP described in this study shared peculiar features of EM. Presumably, these reflected the hereditary component of the recognition deficit (e.g., De Haan, 1999). ...
Objective:
To contribute to the limited body of eye movement (EM) studies of children and family members with congenital prosopagnosia (CP), a task requiring a verbal response for the identification of personally familiar faces was used for the 1st time.
Method:
EMs were recorded in a father and his son (both diagnosed with CP) and controls (N = 2). In the identification tasks they watched personally familiar faces and distracters and responded by saying the names of the familiar faces or saying "I don't know." Two discrimination tasks were added to distinguish the specificity of the EM pattern for the recognition tasks. In all tasks, faces were presented 1 by 1 until the response onset; thus, the EM pattern was not saturated by overexposure to the stimulus. The 1st fixation position was examined to localize the 1st area of the face attended to. The spatial-temporal fixation pattern was examined to evaluate the attention devoted to specific regions.
Results:
Both family members were inaccurate and slower than controls in the identification but not the discrimination tasks. In all tasks, they made a number of fixations comparable to those of controls but showed longer fixation durations than controls did. In the identification tasks, they showed poor spatial-temporal distribution of fixations on the eyes and rare 1st fixations on the eyes.
Conclusions:
Consistent with the literature, both family members showed the typical reduced sampling of the eyes. Nevertheless, our protocol based on explicit verbal responses (which included EM only until response onset) showed that they did not increase the spatial sampling overall by making more fixations than controls did. Instead, they showed longer fixation durations across tasks; this was interpreted as a generalized problem with face processing in affording a more robust sampling of information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
... Because a researcher on the show was looking for participants to enroll in a study concerned with hereditary forms of prosopagnosia (cf. [10,11]), J asked her family members whether they had the same problem as her. No one in J's family identified with the symptoms she described, which makes it likely that J has a non-hereditary form of the condition [12,13]. ...
Background
Not being able to recognize a person’s face is a highly debilitating condition from which people with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) suffer their entire life. Here we describe the case of J, a 30 year old woman who reports being unable to recognize her parents, her husband, or herself in the mirror.
Case presentation
We set out to assess the severity of J’s prosopagnosia using tests with unfamiliar as well as familiar faces and investigated whether impaired configural processing explains her deficit. To assess the specificity of the impairment, we tested J’s performance when evaluating emotions, intentions, and the attractiveness and likability of faces. Detailed testing revealed typical brain activity patterns for faces and normal object recognition skills, and no evidence of any brain injury. However, compared to a group of matched controls, J showed severe deficits in learning new faces, and in recognizing familiar faces when only inner features were available. Her recognition of uncropped faces with blurred features was within the normal range, indicating preserved configural processing when peripheral features are available. J was also unimpaired when evaluating intentions and emotions in faces. In line with healthy controls, J rated more average faces as more attractive. However, she was the only one to rate them as less likable, indicating a preference for more distinctive and easier to recognize faces.
Conclusions
Taken together, the results illustrate both the severity and the specificity of DP in a single case. While DP is a heterogeneous disorder, an inability to integrate the inner features of the face into a whole might be the best explanation for the difficulties many individuals with prosopagnosia experience.
... Four CPs also showed a PI20 score greater than the cut-off score of 65, which is indicative of mild and moderate impairment (Shah et al. 2015). The fact that not all individuals with CP had elevated scores in the PI20 is in accordance with the reports from our semi-structured interviews and not surprising; indeed, previous studies have shown that results from self-reports have to be interpreted with caution as individuals with face recognition impairment are often not well aware of their deficit (Bowles et al. 2009;De Haan 1999;Grueter et al. 2007). All individuals with CP performed in the normal range in the two tests investigating visual object recognition abilities (FMRT and BNT), demonstrating the absence of difficulties in general visual processing. ...
Prosopagnosia is a disorder leading to difficulties in recognizing faces. However, recent evidence suggests that individuals with congenital prosopagnosia can achieve considerable accuracy when they have to recognize their own faces (self-face advantage). Yet, whether this advantage is face-specific or not is still unclear. Here, we aimed to investigate whether individuals with congenial prosopagnosia show a self-advantage also in recognizing other self body-parts and, if so, whether the advantage for the body parts differs from the one characterizing the self-face. Eight individuals with congenital prosopagnosia and 22 controls underwent a delayed matching task in which they were required to recognize faces, hands and feet belonging to the self or to others. Controls showed a similar self-advantage for all the stimuli tested; by contrast, individuals with congenital prosopagnosia showed a larger self-advantage with faces compared to hands and feet, mainly driven by their deficit with others’ faces. In both groups the self-advantages for the different body parts were strongly and significantly correlated. Our data suggest that the self-face advantage showed by individuals with congenital prosopagnosia is not face-specific and that the same mechanism could be responsible for both the self-face and self body-part advantages.
... Further support for the role of neural migration in dyslexia comes from studies showing that the majority of genes associated with dyslexia play a role in neural migration (76). Ramus (70) has suggested this neural migration model of dyslexia may be applicable to DP, and the extensive selectivity reductions in the DPs tested here as well as the heritability of DP (33,(77)(78)(79) fit with his proposal. Looking ahead, the wellcharacterized functional organization of visual recognition provides a unique opportunity to assess the neural scope of a selective developmental disorder, and it will be informative to determine how often DPs have functional abnormalities in regions surrounding those examined here. ...
Significance
People with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) have extremely poor face recognition and even have problems recognizing the faces of family and close friends. We carried out a comprehensive investigation of the neural basis of DP by comparing brain responses to multiple visual categories in DPs and people with normal face processing. The DPs showed widespread abnormalities in areas specialized for face processing and areas that respond preferentially to scenes and bodies. The abnormalities in scene and body areas indicate cortical problems in many DPs extend beyond face areas and open the door to investigations of developmental disorders impacting recognition of categories other than faces.
... One aspect of these results that remains unclear is how stable these exceptional abilities are. There are relatively few studies on the stability of face recognition between childhood or adolescence and adulthood: Some adult cases of DP have recounted difficulties that began in childhood (e.g., Bate et al., 2014;De Haan, 1999;Duchaine, Murray, Turner, White, & Garrido, 2009;Duchaine, Yovel, Butterworth, & Nakayama, 2006); other cases that have originally been reported as children have shown a consistent deficit when followed up after several years (see Dalrymple et al., 2012). Similarly, adult SRs recount experiences from childhood, which suggest their super-recognition arose early in life (e.g., Bobak, Bennetts, et al., 2016;Russell et al., 2009). ...
Face recognition abilities vary widely. While face recognition deficits have been reported in children, it is unclear whether superior face recognition skills can be encountered during development. This paper presents O.B., a 14-year-old female with extraordinary face recognition skills: a “super-recognizer” (SR). O.B. demonstrated exceptional face-processing skills across multiple tasks, with a level of performance that is comparable to adult SRs. Her superior abilities appear to be specific to face identity: She showed an exaggerated face inversion effect and her superior abilities did not extend to object processing or non-identity aspects of face recognition. Finally, an eye-movement task demonstrated that O.B. spent more time than controls examining the nose - a pattern previously reported in adult SRs. O.B. is therefore particularly skilled at extracting and using identity-specific facial cues, indicating that face and object recognition are dissociable during development, and that super recognition can be detected in adolescence.
... Prosopagnosia can also be developmental (DP) in nature, occurring in individuals with no history of brain damage [12][13][14] . DP cases have been shown to exhibit reduced matter density and abnormal neural responses to faces throughout the brain's face processing regions [15][16][17][18][19] . ...
A wealth of evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neuroimaging research supports the view that face recognition is reliant upon a domain-specific network that does not process words. In contrast, the recent many-to-many model of visual recognition posits that brain areas involved in word and face recognition are functionally integrated.Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is characterised by severe deficits in the recognition of faces, which the many-to-many model predicts should negatively affect word recognition.Alternatively, domain-specific accounts suggest that impairments in face and word processing need not go hand in hand. To test these possibilities, we ran a battery of 7 tasks examining word processing in a group of DP cases and controls. One of our prosopagnosia cases exhibited a severe reading impairment with delayed response times during reading aloud tasks, but not lexical decision tasks. Overall, however, we found no evidence of global word processing deficits in DP, consistent with a dissociation account for face and word processing.
... While some authors report strong relationships between self-report measures and face recognition ability (FRA; e.g. Shah et al., 2015), most colleagues agree that people have limited insight into their FRA (Bobak et al., 2016;De Haan, 1999; Palermo et al., 2016). Specifically, Shah et al. (2015) argue that a comprehensive 20-item scale (PI-20) could be successfully used for identification of developmental prosopagnosia (DP) in the general population. ...
... This tends to occur following media coverage of the phenomenon, where people suspect they may also have extraordinary face recognition skills. The issue of self-report has been contentious in the prosopagnosia literature, where most reports indicate that we have little insight into our face recognition skills (De Haan, 1999;Palermo et al., 2016; but see Kennerknecht et al., 2006;Shah et al., 2015). Notably, in their recent study, Palermo et al. (2016) compared the performance of 300 participants on a variety of behavioral measures against their self-reported face recognition ability. ...
The Cambridge Face Memory Test Long Form (CFMT+) and Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT) are typically used to assess the face processing ability of individuals who believe they have superior face recognition skills. Previous large-scale studies have presented norms for the CFPT but not the CFMT+. However, previous research has also highlighted the necessity for establishing country-specific norms for these tests, indicating that norming data is required for both tests using young British adults. The current study addressed this issue in 254 British participants. In addition to providing the first norm for performance on the CFMT+ in any large sample, we also report the first UK specific cut-off for superior face recognition on the CFPT. Further analyses identified a small advantage for females on both tests, and only small associations between objective face recognition skills and self-report measures. A secondary aim of the study was to examine the relationship between trait or social anxiety and face processing ability, and no associations were noted. The implications of these findings for the classification of super-recognizers are discussed.
... It was initially thought that DP was an extremely rare disorder (e.g., De Haan, 1999;Jones & Tranel, 2001). In 1963, Bornstein briefly described some cases of prosopagnosia that appeared to be developmental in ...
Over the last 20 years much attention in the field of face recognition has been directed towards the study of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), with some authors investigating the behavioural characteristics of the condition and many others using these individuals to further our theoretical understanding of the typical face-processing system. It is broadly agreed that the term "DP" refers to people who have failed to develop the ability to recognize faces in the absence of neurological illness or injury, yet more precise terminology in relation to potential subtypes of the population are yet to be confirmed. Further, specific diagnostic techniques and inclusion and exclusion criteria have yet to be uniformly accepted across the field, making cross-paper comparisons and meta-analyses very difficult. This paper presents an overview of the current challenges that face research into DP, and introduces a series of papers that attempt to further our understanding of the condition's characteristics. It is hoped that that this special issue will provide a springboard for further research addressing these issues, improving the current state of the art by ensuring the quality of theoretical investigations into DP, and by posing advances that will assist those who have the condition.
... There appear to be a number of possible routes to developmental prosopagnosia. These include genetic conditions (de Haan, 1999;, early brain damage (Barton, Cherkasova, Press, Intrilligator, & O'Connor, 2003;Michelon & Biederman, 2003), and possibly early visual problems such as infantile cataracts (Le Grand et al., 2001;Le Grand, Mondloch, Maurer, & Brent, 2003) or severe myopia. A number of problems are commonly associated with developmental prosopagnosia, and, not surprisingly, many of the associated deficits are handled by brain areas in the vicinity of areas involved with face recognition. ...
... Over the last years a form of prosopagnosia has attracted attention that presents itself without any indication of damage to the brain [9]. Because of lifelong impairment and familial clustering [10,11] this condition has been termed "congenital prosopagnosia". The core deficit in cPA is the impaired recognition of familiar faces which has been used as the defining neuropsychological criterion, e.g. ...
Modularity of face processing is still a controversial issue. Congenital prosopagnosia (cPA), a selective and lifelong impairment in familiar face recognition without evidence of an acquired cerebral lesion, offers a unique opportunity to support this fundamental hypothesis. However, in spite of the pronounced behavioural impairment, identification of a functionally relevant neural alteration in congenital prosopagnosia by electrophysiogical methods has not been achieved so far. Here we show that persons with congenital prosopagnosia can be distinguished as a group from unimpaired persons using magnetoencephalography. Early face-selective MEG-responses in the range of 140 to 200ms (the M170) showed prolonged latency and decreased amplitude whereas responses to another category (houses) were indistinguishable between subjects with congenital prosopagnosia and unimpaired controls. Latency and amplitude of face-selective EEG responses (the N170) which were simultaneously recorded were statistically indistinguishable between subjects with cPA and healthy controls which resolves heterogeneous and partly conflicting results from existing studies. The complementary analysis of categorical differences (evoked activity to faces minus evoked activity to houses) revealed that the early part of the 170ms response to faces is altered in subjects with cPA. This finding can be adequately explained in a common framework of holistic and part-based face processing. Whereas a significant brain-behaviour correlation of face recognition performance and the size of the M170 amplitude is found in controls a corresponding correlation is not seen in subjects with cPA. This indicates functional relevance of the alteration found for the 170ms response to faces in cPA and pinpoints the impairment of face processing to early perceptual stages.
... First, our data underline the value of formal perceptual testing. This point has been made regarding face recognition, that subjective impressions or questionnaires are not always corroborated by formal face processing tests (De Haan, 1999). Similarly, although most prosopagnosic subjects claim to rely on voice to identify others, objective tests have revealed asymptomatic voice recognition deficits in some (Boudouresques et al., 1979;Liu et al., 2014). ...
Developmental prosopagnosia is a disorder of face recognition that is believed to reflect impairments of visual mechanisms. However, voice recognition has rarely been evaluated in developmental prosopagnosia to clarify if it is modality-specific or part of a multi-modal person recognition syndrome.
Our goal was to examine whether voice discrimination and/or recognition are impaired in subjects with developmental prosopagnosia.
73 healthy controls and 12 subjects with developmental prosopagnosia performed a match-to-sample test of voice discrimination and a test of short-term voice familiarity, as well as a questionnaire about face and voice identification in daily life.
Eleven subjects with developmental prosopagnosia scored within the normal range for voice discrimination and voice recognition. One was impaired on discrimination and borderline for recognition, with equivalent scores for face and voice recognition, despite being unaware of voice processing problems.
Most subjects with developmental prosopagnosia are not impaired in short-term voice familiarity, providing evidence that developmental prosopagnosia is usually a modality-specific disorder of face recognition. However, there may be heterogeneity, with a minority having additional voice processing deficits. Objective tests of voice recognition should be integrated into the diagnostic evaluation of this disorder to distinguish it from a multi-modal person recognition syndrome.
Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
... Unlike acquired prosopagnosia (AP) which results from explicit brain damage and is rare, CP is more common in the population at large (approximately 2% of prevalence rate) in both the Caucasian (Kennerknecht et al., 2006), and non-Caucasian population (Kennerknecht et al., 2007(Kennerknecht et al., , 2008, and runs in some families (de Haan, 1999;Grüeter et al., 2007;Johnen et al., 2014). Much of the recent research has explored the neural basis of CP and has identified differences, relative to controls, in the distributed face network. ...
Congenital prosopagnosia (CP) refers to a lifelong impairment in face processing despite normal visual and intellectual skills. Many studies have suggested that the key underlying deficit in CP is one of a failure to engage holistic processing. Moreover, there has been some suggestion that, in normal observers, there may be greater involvement of the right than left hemisphere in holistic processing. To examine the proposed deficit in holistic processing and its potential hemispheric atypicality in CP, we compared the performance of 8 CP individuals with both matched controls and a large group of non-matched controls on a novel, vertical composite task. In this task, participants judged whether a cued half of a face (either left or right half) was the same or different at study and test, and the two face halves could be either aligned or misaligned. The standard index of holistic processing is one in which the unattended face half influences performance on the cued half and this influence is greater in the aligned than in the misaligned condition. Relative to controls, the CP participants, both at a group and at an individual level, did not show holistic processing in the vertical composite task. There was also no difference in performance as a function of hemifield of the cued face half in the CP individuals, and this was true in the control participants, as well. The findings clearly confirm the deficit in holistic processing in CP and reveal the useful application of this novel experimental paradigm to this population and potentially to others as well.
... Hasson, Malach, Behrmann, Avidan, Marotta, & Kimchi, 2005;De Haan, 1999;De Haan & Campbell, 1991;Dinkelacker et al., 2011;Kimchi, Behrmann, Avidan, Amishav, 2012;Kress & Daum, 2003;McConachie, 1976; Van den Stock, van de Riet, Righart, & de Gelder, 2008). Stollhoff, Elze, Kennerknecht, & Jost (2011). ...
There is abundant evidence that face recognition, in comparison to the recognition of other objects, is based on holistic processing rather than analytic processing. One line of research that provides evidence for this hypothesis is based on the study of people who experience pronounced difficulties in visually identifying conspecifics on the basis of their face. Earlier, we developed a behavioural paradigm to directly test analytic vs. holistic face processing. In comparison to a to be remembered reference face stimulus, one of two test stimuli was either presented in full view, with an eye-contingently moving window (only showing the fixated face feature, and therefore only affording analytic processing), or with an eye-contingently moving mask or scotoma (masking the fixated face feature, but still allowing holistic processing). In the present study we use this paradigm (that we used earlier in acquired prosopagnosia) to study face perception in congenital prosopagnosia (people having difficulties recognizing faces from birth on, without demonstrable brain damage). We observe both holistic and analytic face processing deficits in people with congenital prosopagnosia. Implications for a better understanding, both of congenital prosopagnosia and of normal face perception, are discussed.
... It had been thought until recently that prosopagnosia was a rare disorder, with the vast number of identified cases acquiring problems with face recognition following some form of brain injury (Farah, 1990). However, cases with no evidence of neurological injury have been identified in recent years (e.g., de Haan, 1999;Duchaine, 2000;Duchaine et al., 2003). These latter cases have become known as Congenital or Developmental Prosopagnosia (DP). ...
Dual process models of recognition memory propose two distinct routes for recognizing a face: recollection and familiarity. Recollection is characterized by the remembering of some contextual detail from a previous encounter with a face whereas familiarity is the feeling of finding a face familiar without any contextual details. The Remember/Know (R/K) paradigm is thought to index the relative contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. Despite researchers measuring face recognition deficits in developmental prosopagnosia (DP) through a variety of methods, none have considered the distinct contributions of recollection and familiarity to recognition performance. The present study examined recognition memory for faces in eight individuals with DP and a group of controls using an R/K paradigm while recording electroencephalogram (EEG) data at the scalp. Those with DP were found to produce fewer correct “remember” responses and more false alarms than controls. EEG results showed that posterior “remember” old/new effects were delayed and restricted to the right posterior (RP) area in those with DP in comparison to the controls. A posterior “know” old/new effect commonly associated with familiarity for faces was only present in the controls whereas individuals with DP exhibited a frontal “know” old/new effect commonly associated with words, objects and pictures. These results suggest that individuals with DP do not utilize normal face-specific routes when making face recognition judgments but instead process faces using a pathway more commonly associated with objects.
... Face recognition performance is strongly impaired in three members of the same family when compared to age-matched neurotypicals. Specifically, we found severe impairment in the recognition of famous faces in each CP participant, similarly to previous studies of CP and AP ( [12,24,94,95], for a review see [96]). In addition, and in line with recent results [14,42,97] we found a heterogeneous perceptual profile across the three CP participants. ...
Congenital prosopagnosia is lifelong face-recognition impairment in the absence of evidence for structural brain damage. To study the neural correlates of congenital prosopagnosia, we measured the face-sensitive N170 component of the event-related potential in three members of the same family (father (56y), son (25y) and daughter (22y)) and in age-matched neurotypical participants (young controls: n=14; 24.5y ± 2.1; old controls (n=6; 57.3y ± 5.4). To compare the face sensitivity of N170 in congenital prosopagnosic and neurotypical participants we measured the event-related potentials for faces and phase-scrambled random noise stimuli. In neurotypicals we found significantly larger N170 amplitude for faces compared to noise stimuli, reflecting normal early face processing. The congenital prosopagnosic participants, by contrast,
showed reduced face sensitivity of the N170, and this was due to a larger than normal noise-elicited N170, rather than to a smaller face-elicited N170. Interestingly, singletrial analysis revealed that the lack of face sensitivity in congenital prosopagnosia is related to a larger oscillatory power and phase-locking in the theta frequency-band (4-7 Hz, 130-190 ms) as well as to a lower intertrial jitter of the response latency for the
noise stimuli. Altogether, these results suggest that congenital prosopagnosia is due to the deficit of early, structural encoding steps of face perception in filtering between face and non-face stimuli.
... CP apparently has a familial basis (e.g. (51)(52)(53)) and, based on pedigree studies, some authors have suggested a heritable basis for this disorder and have proposed a simple autosomal dominant mode of inheritance (54). However, this account has been challenged by analyses of data collected from thousands of self-identified individuals with CP; such analyses reveal that the frequency of affected family members was smaller than that predicted by such a simple mode of inheritance. ...
The goal of the current paper is to review recent findings concerning the neural basis of congenital prosopagnosia (CP), a lifelong impairment in face processing that occurs in the absence of explicit brain damage. As such, CP offers a unique model for exploring the psychological and neural bases of normal face processing. We start by providing background about face perception and representation, and then review behavioral evidence gleaned from individuals with CP. We then review recent functional and structural neural investigations which offer a comprehensive account of the mechanisms underlying CP and support a characterization of this impairment as a disconnection syndrome rather than as a syndrome related to focal brain malfunction. We end the paper by offering a general framework for CP which, we believe, best integrates the behavioral and neural findings, and offers a platform for generating hypotheses for future studies. There remain many open issues in our understanding of CP and, to address these unanswered questions, we lay out several future research directions and testable hypotheses for further investigation.
... Given that many CPs report on first-degree relatives who are also impaired in face recognition, most researchers argue for a hereditary contribution to CP De Haan, 1999;Dobel et al., 2007;Galaburda & Duchaine, 2003;Kennerknecht et al., 2008b). Support for a genetic contribution to face recognition skills in the general population arises from studies in behavioral genetics (Wilmer et al., 2010;Zhu et al., 2010). ...
Congenital prosopagnosia (CP) describes a severe face processing impairment despite intact early vision and in the absence of overt brain damage. CP is assumed to be present from birth and often transmitted within families. Previous studies reported conflicting findings regarding associated deficits in nonface visuoperceptual tasks. However, diagnostic criteria for CP significantly differed between studies, impeding conclusions on the heterogeneity of the impairment. Following current suggestions for clinical diagnoses of CP, we administered standardized tests for face processing, a self-report questionnaire and general visual processing tests to an extended family (N=28), in which many members reported difficulties with face recognition. This allowed us to assess the degree of heterogeneity of the deficit within a large sample of suspected CPs of similar genetic and environmental background. (a) We found evidence for a severe face processing deficit but intact nonface visuoperceptual skills in three family members—a father and his two sons—who fulfilled conservative criteria for a CP diagnosis on standardized tests and a self-report questionnaire, thus corroborating findings of familial transmissions of CP. (b) Face processing performance of the remaining family members was also significantly below the mean of the general population, suggesting that face processing impairments are transmitted as a continuous trait rather than in a dichotomous all-or-nothing fashion. (c) Self-rating scores of face recognition showed acceptable correlations with standardized tests, suggesting this method as a viable screening procedure for CP diagnoses. (d) Finally, some family members revealed severe impairments in general visual processing and nonface visual memory tasks either in conjunction with face perception deficits or as an isolated impairment. This finding may indicate an elevated risk for more general visuoperceptual deficits in families with prosopagnosic members.
... Over the last years a form of prosopagnosia has attracted attention that presents itself without any indication of damage to the brain [9]. Because of lifelong impairment and familial clustering [10,11] this condition has been termed "congenital prosopagnosia". The core deficit in cPA is the impaired recognition of familiar faces which has been used as the defining neuropsychological criterion, e.g. ...
Prosopagnosia is an impairment in the recognition of faces which is known in two variants, congenital (cPA) as well as acquired prosopagnosia (aPA). Recently, it was shown that cPA often leads to a reduction of face specific processing in general and face specific configural processing in particular. In two experiments using a Thatcher illusion paradigm and a simultaneous matching paradigm with faces and houses, we tested 14 patients with cPA that is associated with impaired face recognition but with no macroscopic brain lesions. As a control group, normal participants with an adjusted age range were used. In Exp.1, for subjects with cPA the speed of a grotesqueness decision (RT) in a Thatcher illusion task (a highly demanding configural task) where faces were rotated in steps of 30° was strictly linearly related to the magnitude of the deviation from upright. In Exp.2, subjects with cPA showed face-specific reduction of face matching performance, but no reduction of performance when houses had to be matched. Moreover, the face-specific matching problems did occur most strongly when faces differed in relational aspects only. Results from both experiments indicate that cPA is tightly linked with reduced face-specific configural processing abilities.
... The very first report on DP, written about a 12-year-old girl known as A.B., indicated that A.B.'s mother experienced face recognition difficulties of her own, although she was not formally tested (McConachie, 1976). Since then, numerous reports have indicated the presence of DP in multiple family members (Behrmann, Avidan, Marotta, & Kimchi, 2005;de Haan, 1999;Diaz, 2008;Duchaine, Nieminen-von Wendt, New, & Kulomaki, 2003). Even some "celebrity" cases of DP, such as primatologist Jane Goodall and neurologist Oliver Sacks, have reported family members who had suspected DP (Goodall & Berman, 2000;Sacks, 2010). ...
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is defined by severe face recognition problems resulting from a failure to develop the necessary visual mechanisms for processing faces. While there is a growing literature on DP in adults, little has been done to study this disorder in children. The profound impact of abnormal face perception on social functioning and the general lack of awareness of childhood DP can result in severe social and psychological consequences for children. This review discusses possible aetiologies of DP and summarizes the few cases of childhood DP that have been reported. It also outlines key objectives for the growth of this emerging research area and special considerations for studying DP in children. With clear goals and concerted efforts, the study of DP in childhood will be an exciting avenue for enhancing our understanding of normal and abnormal face perception for all age groups.
... Only recently, an increasing number of cases with an idiopathic form of prosopagnosiamostly called congenital or developmental form -in the absence of any exogenous event are reported (review Behrmann and Avidan, 2005). Until 2003 three reports about familial segregation were published clearly supporting the heredity of "non"-face recognition (De Haan 1999, Galaburda and Duchaine 2003 (Fig. 4). ...
The face image database is essential to evaluate the face detection and recognition algorithms. Out-of-focus blur is one of the important factors which may influence the detection and recognition results. To investigate the effect of out-of-focus blur on the performance of face recognition system, a new face database concentrating on the factor of out-of-focus blur was built. Two typical acquisition facilities - PC camera and professional digital camera - were used. The whole focus range was divided into 11 intervals. 628 images were gathered with similar pose and expression, but with strictly controlled different definitions. The features and building process of the database are presented in this paper. Then evaluation of the blur assessment algorithms are raised. A suggestion of the usage of the blur assessment algorithms is proposed.
... There is accumulating evidence for the idea that genetic factors are involved in the development of selective developmental disorders. This line of research is motivated by the observation of a familial factor in the development of specific developmental problems, e.g. the observation that developmental prosopagnosia 'runs in families' [46]. We extended our investigation of our colour agnostic subject to include his family, and discovered that his mother and one of his daughters show the same problemalbeit to a lesser degree. ...
The primate visual brain is classically portrayed as a large number of separate 'maps', each dedicated to the processing of specific visual cues, such as colour, motion or faces and their many features. In order to understand this fractionated architecture, the concept of cortical 'pathways' or 'streams' was introduced. In the currently prevailing view, the different maps are organised hierarchically into two major pathways, one involved in recognition and memory (the ventral stream or 'what' pathway) and the other in the programming of action (the dorsal stream or 'where' pathway). In this review, we question this heuristically influential but potentially misleading linear hierarchical pathway model and argue instead for a 'patchwork' or network model.
... For that reason we preferred the alternative term ''congenital'' even though so far it has not been proven that the impairment actually exists from birth) or ''congenital'' (emphasizing the inborn nature) prosopagnosia. There is increasing evidence that this latter type of impairment runs in families789, and it seems to be especially prevalent in patients suffering from Asperger syndrome and other social-emotional disorders [10]. It is a matter of an ongoing and intense debate whether the impairment is only restricted to the processing of faces, or whether it is accompanied by more general deficits of visual processing. ...
Congenital prosopagnosia is a severe face perception impairment which is not acquired by a brain lesion and is presumably present from birth. It manifests mostly by an inability to recognise familiar persons. Electrophysiological research has demonstrated the relevance to face processing of a negative deflection peaking around 170 ms, labelled accordingly as N170 in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and M170 in magnetoencephalography (MEG). The M170 was shown to be sensitive to the inversion of faces and to familiarity--two factors that are assumed to be crucial for congenital prosopagnosia. In order to locate the cognitive dysfunction and its neural correlates, we investigated the time course of neural activity in response to these manipulations.
Seven individuals with congenital prosopagnosia and seven matched controls participated in the experiment. To explore brain activity with high accuracy in time, we recorded evoked magnetic fields (275 channel whole head MEG) while participants were looking at faces differing in familiarity (famous vs. unknown) and orientation (upright vs. inverted). The underlying neural sources were estimated by means of the least square minimum-norm-estimation (L2-MNE) approach.
The behavioural data corroborate earlier findings on impaired configural processing in congenital prosopagnosia. For the M170, the overall results replicated earlier findings, with larger occipito-temporal brain responses to inverted than upright faces, and more right- than left-hemispheric activity. Compared to controls, participants with congenital prosopagnosia displayed a general decrease in brain activity, primarily over left occipitotemporal areas. This attenuation did not interact with familiarity or orientation.
The study substantiates the finding of an early involvement of the left hemisphere in symptoms of prosopagnosia. This might be related to an efficient and overused featural processing strategy which serves as a compensation of impaired configural processing.
The prevalence of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), lifelong face recognition deficits, is widely reported to be 2-2.5%. However, DP has been diagnosed in different ways across studies, resulting in differing prevalence rates. In the current investigation, we estimated the range of DP prevalence by administering well-validated objective and subjective face recognition measures to an unselected web-based sample of 3116 18-55 year-olds and applying DP diagnostic cutoffs from the last 14 years. We found estimated prevalence rates ranged from .64-5.42% when using a z-score approach and .13-2.95% when using a percentile approach, with the most commonly used cutoffs by researchers having a prevalence rate of .93% (z-score, .45% when using percentiles). We next used multiple cluster analyses to examine whether there was a natural grouping of poorer face recognizers but failed to find consistent grouping beyond those with generally above versus below average face recognition. Lastly, we investigated whether DP studies with more relaxed diagnostic cutoffs were associated with better performance on the Cambridge Face Perception Test. In a sample of 43 studies, there was a weak nonsignificant association between greater diagnostic strictness and better DP face perception accuracy (Kendall's tau-b correlation, τb =.18 z-score; τb = .11 percentiles). Together, these results suggest that researchers have used more conservative DP diagnostic cutoffs than the widely reported 2-2.5% prevalence. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of using more inclusive cutoffs, such as identifying mild and major forms of DP based on DSM-5.
Recent models of voice perception propose a hierarchy of steps leading from a more general, "low-level" acoustic analysis of the voice signal to a voice-specific, "higher-level" analysis. We aimed to engage two of these stages: first, a more general detection task in which voices had to be identified amid environmental sounds, and, second, a more voice-specific task requiring a same/different decision about unfamiliar speaker pairs (Bangor Voice Matching Test [BVMT]). We explored how vulnerable voice recognition is to interfering distractor voices, and whether performance on the aforementioned tasks could predict resistance against such interference. In addition, we manipulated the similarity of distractor voices to explore the impact of distractor similarity on recognition accuracy. We found moderate correlations between voice detection ability and resistance to distraction ( r = .44), and BVMT and resistance to distraction ( r = .57). A hierarchical regression revealed both tasks as significant predictors of the ability to tolerate distractors ( R2 = .36). The first stage of the regression (BVMT as sole predictor) already explained 32% of the variance. Descriptively, the "higher-level" BVMT was a better predictor (β = .47) than the more general detection task (β = .25), although further analysis revealed no significant difference between both beta weights. Furthermore, distractor similarity did not affect performance on the distractor task. Overall, our findings suggest the possibility to target specific stages of the voice perception process. This could help explore different stages of voice perception and their contributions to specific auditory abilities, possibly also in forensic and clinical settings.
A longstanding controversy concerns the functional organization of high-level vision, and the extent to which the recognition of different classes of visual stimuli engages a single system or multiple independent systems. We examine this in the context of congenital prosopagnosia (CP), a neurodevelopmental disorder in which individuals, without a history of brain damage, are impaired at face recognition. This paper reviews all CP cases from 1976 to 2016, and explores the evidence for the association or dissociation of face and object recognition. Of the 238 CP cases with data permitting a satisfactory evaluation, 80.3% evinced an association between impaired face and object recognition whereas 19.7% evinced a dissociation. We evaluate the strength of the evidence and correlate the face and object recognition behaviour. We consider the implications for theories of functional organization of the visual system, and offer suggestions for further adjudication of the relationship between face and object recognition.
Face perception is a critical and complex cognitive operation, and it poses unique the cognitive demands. This chapter addresses the question of whether face perception can be viewed as a cognitive phenotype. Evidence from neurophysiological and neuropsychological studies are summarized that reflect specialization of parts of the visual system for face processing, for example, face-tuned neurons in the superior temporal sulcus of non-human primates, and cortical regions associated with prosopagnosia in humans. Data from cognitive neuroscience (especially functional imaging studies) are presented, illustrating that many distinct brain regions show that activity in response to faces though the lateral fusiform gyrus or “fusiform face area” (FFA) shows a particularly robust response. Current interpretations of FFA activity and how it may be functionally parsed out from the activity of the occipital fusiform area and anterior temporal lobe are then laid out, and this raises the tricky question of what differs between the perception faces and non-face objects as may be expressed along these neural centers. Our discussion on face perception as a potential cognitive phenotype suggests that the domain of operation of the face perception neural mechanism is not all or none. We point instead to a more general purpose visual learning system that happens to be critical in face perception and possibly most fully realized in face perception. The processes of face perception are especially illustrative of difficulties that can be inherent in establishing evidence for a domain-specific cognitive phenotype.
Developmental prosopagnosia has received increased attention in recent years, but as yet has no confirmed genetic or structural markers. It is not certain whether this condition reflects simply the low-end of the spectrum of normal face recognition, an ‘under-development’, or a pathologic failure to develop such mechanisms, a ‘mal-development’. This difference in views creates challenges for the diagnosis of developmental prosopagnosia by behavioural criteria alone, which also vary substantially between studies, with secondary effects on issues such as determining its prevalence. After review of the literature and the problems inherent to diagnoses based solely on behavioural data, we propose as a starting discussion point a set of two primary and four secondary criteria for the diagnosis of developmental prosopagnosia.
Most people recognize familiar faces rapidly, accurately and effortlessly. However, this is not true for individuals with prosopagnosia, who show a deficit in recognizing familiar people by their faces.
Diagnosis of developmental or congenital prosopagnosia (CP) involves self-report of everyday face recognition difficulties, which are corroborated with poor performance on behavioural tests. This approach requires accurate self-evaluation. We examine the extent to which typical adults have insight into their face recognition abilities across four studies involving nearly 300 participants. The studies used five tests of face recognition ability: two that tap into the ability to learn and recognise previously unfamiliar faces (the Cambridge Face Memory Test, CFMT, Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006 and a newly devised test based on the CFMT but where the study phases involve watching short movies rather than viewing static faces - the CFMT-Films) and three that tap face matching (Benton Facial Recognition Test, BFRT, Benton, Sivan, Hamsher, Varney, & Spreen, 1983; and two recently devised sequential face matching tests). Self-reported ability was measured with the 15-item Kennerknecht et al. (2008) questionnaire; two single-item questions assessing face recognition ability; and a new 77-item meta-cognition questionnaire). Overall, we find that adults with typical face recognition abilities have only modest insight into their ability to recognise faces on behavioural tests. In a fifth study, we assess self-reported face recognition ability in people with CP and find that some people who expect to perform poorly on behavioural tests of face recognition do indeed perform poorly. However, it is not yet clear whether individuals within this group of poor performers have greater levels of insight (i.e., into their degree of impairment) than those with more typical levels of performance. PQJE_1161058_Supplemental_Material.docx.
Both congenital prosopagnosia (CP) and acquired prosopagnosia (AP) are characterized by a deficit in recognizing faces, but the former is a failure to acquire face-processing skills in the absence of any obvious sensory, neural, or cognitive disorder, while the latter is the loss of skill as a result of explicit brain injury. Whether the mechanisms affected in CP and AP are the same is not yet clear. For example, patients with CP are better at deriving emotional information from faces, and all patients with AP show abnormal electrophysiological (ERP), magnetoencephalographic (MEG), and neuroimaging profiles, whereas this is not always the case for CP. Studies that directly compare the detailed behavioral and neural signatures of CP and AP will be informative with respect to uncovering the fundamental sequence of acquisition or ordering of the componentialprocesses associated with face recognition. © 2010 by Isabel Gauthier, Michael J. Tarr, and Daniel Bub. All rights reserved.
The concept of holistic processing is a cornerstone of face recognition research, yet central questions related to holistic processing remain unanswered, and debates have thus far failed to reach a resolution despite accumulating empirical evidence. We argue that a considerable source of confusion in this literature stems from a methodological problem. Specifically, 2 measures of holistic processing based on the composite paradigm (complete design and partial design) are used in the literature, but they often lead to qualitatively different results. First, we present a comprehensive review of the work that directly compares the 2 designs, and which clearly favors the complete design over the partial design. Second, we report a meta-analysis of holistic face processing according to both designs and use this as further evidence for one design over the other. The meta-analysis effect size of holistic processing in the complete design is nearly 3 times that of the partial design. Effect sizes were not correlated between measures, consistent with the suggestion that they do not measure the same thing. Our meta-analysis also examines the correlation between conditions in the complete design of the composite task, and suggests that in an individual differences context, little is gained by including a misaligned baseline. Finally, we offer a comprehensive review of the state of knowledge about holistic processing based on evidence gathered from the measure we favor based on the 1st sections of our review-the complete design-and outline outstanding research questions in that new context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
This article gives an overview of what we can learn about face perception from studying its disorders. The term "disorders" is broadly interpreted to include acquired brain injury and disease, neurodevelopmental differences, and neuropsychiatric problems. The article examines the reasons for various opinions about what can be learnt from disorders, ranging from the entire spectrum from "nothing that isn't misleading" to "everything worth knowing." Cognitive neuropsychology typically operates in a unique way, in which the emphasis is on detailed analysis of individual patients with theoretically interesting impairments. The article then highlights a number of the assumptions that get made, explains why things are often complicated, and emphasizes the value of a pragmatic "converging operations" approach in which evidence from disorders of face perception is brought together with other sources of data and theory.
A 60-year-old, right-handed woman, with no focal brain lesions, suffered from a progressive impairment in recognising people of personal relevance and public figures familiar to her in the premorbid period. The patient did not suffer from general cognitive deterioration. There was no ecological or clear psychometric evidence of visuoperceptual or visuospatial deficits. Her defective person recognition was not overcome by extra-facial (e.g., observing animated people in their usual surroundings) or extra-visual information (e.g., listening to the voice). Moreover, presenting the correct name in the presence of an unrecognised familiar person failed to prompt her familiarity judgement, or retrieval of the relevant biographical knowledge. The patient also had some recognition difficulties with famous buildings and songs as well as with some common objects. It is argued that the patient's difficulty in identifying familiar people was the consequence of progressive loss of stored exemplars of familiar persons and perhaps also of some other "unique items" (famous songs and monuments) in an independent subsystem of semantics that we term "exemplar semantics." We discuss the associative (semantic) nature and specificity of the deficit in person knowledge, the possible top-down negative influences of the loss of exemplars in the person recognition system, and the link between the disorders and the right/left temporal lobe.
De visuele waarneming is het meest ontwikkelde zintuig van de mens en ongeveer eenderde van het brein is erbij betrokken.
De gedetailleerde informatie die wij hebben over de buitenwereld is vooral gebaseerd op de visuele waarneming. Dat het hier
om een complex cerebraal mechanisme gaat, kwam al naar voren uit de studies van de Duitse fysioloog Hermann Munk en de Britse
neuroloog Hughlings Jackson in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw. Zij demonstreerden het verschil tussen ‘zien’ en ‘herkennen’.
Congenital prosopagnosia is a selective deficit in face identification that is present from birth. Previously, behavioral deficits in face recognition and differences in the neuroanatomical structure and functional activation of face processing areas have been documented mostly in separate studies. Here, we propose a neural network model of congenital prosopagnosia which relates behavioral and neuropsychological studies of prosopagnosia to theoretical models of information processing. In this study we trained a neural network with two different algorithms to represent face images. First, we introduced a predisposition towards a decreased network connectivity implemented as a temporal independent component analysis (ICA). This predisposition induced a featural representation of faces in terms of isolated face parts. Second, we trained the network for optimal information encoding using spatial ICA, which led to holistic representations of faces. The network model was then tested empirically in an experiment with ten prosopagnosic and twenty age-matched controls. Participants had to discriminate between faces that were changed either according to the prosopagnosic model of featural representation or to the control model of holistic representation. Compared to controls prosopagnosic participants were impaired only in discriminating holistic changes of faces but showed no impairment in detecting featural changes. In summary, the proposed model presents an empirically testable account of congenital prosopagnosia that links the critical features--a lack of holistic processing at the computational level and a sparse structural connectivity at the implementation level. More generally, our results point to structural differences in the network connectivity as the cause of the face processing deficit in congenital prosopagnosia.
Populations of visual neurones have been discovered in one area of the temporal association cortex that respond to different aspects of facial information. The responses of these cells have many of the properties hypothesized for ‘gnostic units’ and provide insight into the final stages of visual processing leading to recognition of an object as a face and more specifically the identity of the face.
Prosopagnosic patients suffer an inability to recognize familiar people by visual inspection of their faces. Despite the absence of overt recognition, though, some prosopagnosic patients continue to process the identities of familiar faces covertly. A longstanding controversy concerns whether the recognition deficit in prosopagnosia is specific for faces, or also affects other types of visual stimuli. We investigated whether the patient P.H., who has severe problems with within-class recognition of many types of visual stimuli, would show covert recognition for all stimuli which he cannot recognize overtly. Such a finding would be consistent with the idea that face recognition and recognition of other visually similar stimuli are performed by the same underlying functional mechanisms. We assessed this possibility with a forced-choice decision between correct and incorrect alternative names for familiar faces, cars and flowers, and with comparisons of P.H.'s ability to learn true versus untrue names to familiar faces, cars and flowers. Results indicated that P.H. does show covert recognition of cars and flowers, as well as faces. In addition, the covert effects observed in the forced-choice name decision and learning tasks used here were shown to have a potential common basis. Finally, the possibility of using covert knowledge as a basis for rehabilitation was explored. As was observed by Sergent and Poncet (1990) in their patient, P.H. could achieve some overt face recognition under very specific circumstances.
The present paper focuses on the modular attributes of face recognition, defined in terms of domain specificity. Domain specificity is examined by looking into the innate nature of face recognition, the special effects related to the recognition of inverted faces, the specificity of electrophysiological responsivity to facial stimuli, and the specific impairment in face recognition associated with localized brain damage. Converging evidence from these sources seems to consistently show that face recognition is not qualitatively unique, as it proceeds in a manner similar to the recognition of other visuospatial objects. However, it seems to be special in that it may involve specific mechanisms dedicated to face recognition. Among infants, differential responsivity to faces and to other objects in terms of age of onset, attraction and course of development, seems to indicate the operation of a special process. Unusual inversion effects in face recognition might be due to the special expertise that humans develop for recognizing upright faces. Face-selective single unit responses in the monkey's brain implies the existence in the visual system of cells which are exclusively dedicated to the processing of facial stimuli. Finally, in prosopagnosia localized brain damage is linked to a specific inability to recognize familiar faces. Taken together, the data seem to show that some elements in the process of face recognition are domain specific, and in that sense, modular.