Investigations of face expertise in the social developmental disorders. Neurology 2007 Aug 28;69(9):860-70
Date
08/29/2007Pubmed ID
17724288DOI
10.1212/01.wnl.0000267842.85646.f2Scopus ID
2-s2.0-34548230530 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 24 CitationsAbstract
BACKGROUND: Patients with social developmental disorders (SDD), also known as autism spectrum disorders, may have impaired recognition of facial identity or facial expressions.
OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to determine whether SDDs were characterized by loss of a perceptual mechanism responsible for face expertise, as current theories suggest that such a loss should be selective for upright faces, disproportionately affect the perception of facial configuration, and possibly be more severe in the eye region.
METHOD: We tested a group of 24 adult patients with SDD with an oddity paradigm that required them to detect changes in facial configuration or feature color, in either the eyes or the mouth, in both upright and inverted faces.
RESULTS: One group of subjects with SDD with normal famous face recognition had only a mild reduction in accuracy and a normal pattern of inversion effects. A second group of subjects with SDD with impaired famous face recognition had a severe reduction of accuracy. This deficit was not limited to upright faces. It affected the perception of feature configuration and feature color to a similar degree and both eye and mouth changes were discriminated poorly in upright faces.
CONCLUSION: The impaired face recognition that is present in a subset of patients with social developmental disorders is accompanied by impaired face perception, and this impairment is not exclusive to upright faces, facial configuration, or the eye region. The reduced face processing skills in these subjects may be more consistent with recent computational models of face expertise than with classic dual-route hypotheses.
Author List
Barton JJ, Hefter RL, Cherkasova MV, Manoach DSAuthor
Rebecca L. Stilp PhD Assistant Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of WisconsinMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdolescentAdult
Autistic Disorder
Brain
Face
Female
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Perceptual Disorders
Photic Stimulation
Predictive Value of Tests
