What aspects of face processing are impaired in developmental prosopagnosia?

• Published in: Brain and cognition 2006-07, Vol.61 (2), p.139-158
• Main Authors: Le Grand, Richard, Cooper, Philip A., Mondloch, Catherine J., Lewis, Terri L., Sagiv, Noam, de Gelder, Beatrice, Maurer, Daphne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Aged; Attractiveness; Biological and medical sciences; Configural processing; Face; Face detection; Face processing; Featural processing; Female; Form Perception - physiology; Global form; Global motion; Holistic processing; Humans; Judgment; Measures (Individuals); Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Motion; Motion Perception - physiology; Neurological Impairments; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Perceptual Impairments; Prosopagnosia; Prosopagnosia - diagnosis; Prosopagnosia - physiopathology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Recognition (Psychology); Severity of Illness Index; Sex Factors; Signal Detection, Psychological - physiology; Visual Discrimination; Visual Perception - physiology; Visual Stimuli
• ISSN: 0278-2626; 1090-2147
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2005.11.005

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a severe impairment in identifying faces that is present from early in life and that occurs despite no apparent brain damage and intact visual and intellectual function. Here, we investigated what aspects of face processing are impaired/spared in developmental prosopagnosia by examining a relatively large group of individuals with DP ( n = 8) using an extensive battery of well-established tasks. The tasks included measures of sensitivity to global motion and to global form, detection that a stimulus is a face, determination of its sex, holistic face processing, processing of face identity based on features, contour, and the spacing of features, and judgments of attractiveness. The DP cases showed normal sensitivity to global motion and global form and performed normally on our tests of face detection and holistic processing. On the other tasks, many DP cases were impaired but there was no systematic pattern. At least half showed deficits in processing of facial identity based on either the outer contour or spacing of the internal features, and/or on judgments of attractiveness. Three of the eight were impaired in processing facial identify based on the shape of internal features. The results show that DP is a heterogeneous condition and that impairment in recognizing faces cannot be predicted by poor performance on any one measure of face processing.