Detailed exploration of face-related processing in congenital prosopagnosia: 1. Behavioral findings

Marlene Behrmann, Galia Avidan, Jonathan J. Marotta, Rutie Kimchi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We show that five individuals with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) are impaired at face recognition and discrimination and do not exhibit the normal superiority for upright over inverted faces despite intact visual acuity, low-level vision and intelligence, and in the absence of any obvious neural concomitant. Interestingly, the deficit is not limited to faces: The CP individuals were also impaired at discriminating common objects and novel objects although to a lesser extent than discriminating faces. The perceptual deficit may be attributable to a more fundamental visual processing disorder; the CP individuals exhibited difficulty in deriving global configurations from simple visual stimuli, even with extended exposure duration and considerable perceptual support in the image. Deriving a global configuration from local components is more critical for faces than for other objects, perhaps accounting for the exaggerated deficit in face processing. These findings elucidate the psychological mechanisms underlying CP and support the link between configural and face processing.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1130-1149
Number of pages20
JournalJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience
Volume17
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2005

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Detailed exploration of face-related processing in congenital prosopagnosia: 1. Behavioral findings'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this