Authors:

Palermo, R., Willis, M., Rivolta, D., Wilson, C. E., & CALDER, A.J.

Reference:

Year of publication:

2010

CBU number:

7135

Abstract:

People with developmental or congenital prosopagnosia (CP) have never learned to adequately recognise faces, despite intact sensory and intellectual functioning. This impairment is often restricted to facial identity, with many CPs demonstrating no apparent difficulties recognising facial expression. Typically developing adults code identity and expression information holistically, integrating information from across the whole face at a perceptual level. The most common measure of holistic coding is the composite effect. In the identity version, participants identify the top (or bottom) half of a face paired with the bottom (or top) half of another person’s face. The composite effect is the amount by which identification is more difficult when halves are vertically aligned (forming the illusion of a new face) as compared to when halves are misaligned. For expressions, the method combines a top half showing one expression with a bottom half showing another. The aim of this project was to test holistic coding of both identity and expression, with the composite effect, in a large sample of CPs (n = 12). Holistic coding, of both identity and expression, was intact in this group of CPs. This suggests that holistic coding deficits are not fundamental to developmental disorders of face recognition.