Impaired holistic coding of facial expression and facial identity in congenital prosopagnosia
Date
2011
Authors
Palermo, Romina
Willis, Megan
Rivolta, Davide
McKone, Elinor
Wilson, C.Ellie
Calder, Andrew
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Pergamon Press
Abstract
We test 12 individuals with congenital prosopagnosia (CP), who replicate a common pattern of showing severe difficulty in recognising facial identity in conjunction with normal recognition of facial expressions (both basic and 'social'). Strength of holistic processing was examined using standard expression composite and identity composite tasks. Compared to age- and sex-matched controls, group analyses demonstrated that CPs showed weaker holistic processing, for both expression and identity information. Implications are (a) normal expression recognition in CP can derive from compensatory strategies (e.g., over-reliance on non-holistic cues to expression); (b) the split between processing of expression and identity information may take place after a common stage of holistic processing; and (c) contrary to a recent claim, holistic processing of identity is functionally involved in face identification ability.
Description
Keywords
Keywords: adult; article; clinical article; controlled study; face profile; facial expression; female; human; male; neurologic examination; pattern recognition; prosopagnosia; social cognition; task performance; visual stimulation; Adult; Face; Facial Expression; F Emotion; Expression; Face perception; Holistic processing; Identity; Prosopagnosia
Citation
Collections
Source
Neuropsychologia
Type
Journal article