Can generic expertise explain special processing for faces?

Does face recognition involve face-specific cognitive and neural processes (‘domain specificity’) or do faces only seem special because people have had more experience of individuating them than they have of individuating members of other homogeneous object categories (‘the expertise hypothesis’)? H...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Trends in cognitive sciences 2007-01, Vol.11 (1), p.8-15
Main Authors: McKone, Elinor, Kanwisher, Nancy, Duchaine, Bradley C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Brain - cytology
Brain Mapping
Face
Facial Expression
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Medicine
Neurology
Neurons - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Perception
Photic Stimulation - methods
Prosopagnosia - genetics
Prosopagnosia - physiopathology
Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Specialization
Vision
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Summary:Does face recognition involve face-specific cognitive and neural processes (‘domain specificity’) or do faces only seem special because people have had more experience of individuating them than they have of individuating members of other homogeneous object categories (‘the expertise hypothesis’)? Here, we summarize new data that test these hypotheses by assessing whether classic face-selective effects – holistic processing, recognition impairments in prosopagnosia and fusiform face area activation – remain face selective in comparison with objects of expertise. We argue that evidence strongly supports domain specificity rather than the expertise hypothesis. We conclude that the crucial social function of face recognition does not reflect merely a general practice phenomenon and that it might be supported by evolved mechanisms (visual or nonvisual) and/or a sensitive period in infancy.
ISSN:1364-6613
1879-307X
DOI:10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.002