Impaired holistic coding of facial expression and facial identity in congenital prosopagnosia

• Published in: Neuropsychologia Vol. 49; no. 5; pp. 1226 - 1235
• Main Authors: Palermo, Romina, Willis, Megan L., Rivolta, Davide, McKone, Elinor, Wilson, C. Ellie, Calder, Andrew J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2011; Elsevier; Pergamon Press
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Biological and medical sciences; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; Emotion; Expression; Face; Face perception; Facial Expression; Female; Holistic processing; Humans; Identity; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Mood Disorders - etiology; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Neuropsychological Tests; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photic Stimulation; Prosopagnosia; Prosopagnosia - complications; Prosopagnosia - congenital; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reaction Time; Recognition, Psychology - physiology; Social Behavior; Young Adult; Face perception; Emotion; Prosopagnosia; Identity; Expression; Holistic processing; Human; Affect affectivity; Nervous system diseases; Congenital; Vision disorder; Visual agnosia; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Cerebral disorder; Eye disease; Coding; Vision; Central nervous system disease; Information processing; Perception; Face; Facial expression
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.021

▸ Congenital prosopagnosics show weak holistic coding of expression and identity. ▸ Normal expression recognition can result from compensatory strategies. ▸ There may be a common stage of holistic coding for expression and identity. ▸ Holistic coding of identity is functionally involved in face identification ability. 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.