Face matching impairment in developmental prosopagnosia

TY - JOUR

T1 - Face matching impairment in developmental prosopagnosia

AU - White, David

AU - Rivolta, Davide

AU - Burton, Anthony Michael

AU - Al-Janabi, Shahd

AU - Palermo, Romina

N1 - © 2016 The Experimental Psychology Society. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is commonly referred to as ‘face blindness’, a term that implies a perceptual basis to the condition. However, DP presents as a deficit in face recognition and is diagnosed using memory-based tasks. Here, we test face identification ability in six people with DP, who are severely impaired on face memory tasks, using tasks that do not rely on memory. First, we compared DP to control participants on a standardised test of unfamiliar face matching using facial images taken on the same day and under standardised studio conditions (Glasgow Face Matching Test; GFMT). DP participants did not differ from normative accuracy scores on the GFMT. Second, we tested face matching performance on a test created using images that were sourced from the Internet and so vary substantially due to changes in viewing conditions and in a person’s appearance (Local Heroes Test; LHT). DP participants show significantly poorer matching accuracy on the LHT relative to control participants, for both unfamiliar and familiar face matching. Interestingly, this deficit is specific to ‘match’ trials, suggesting that people with DP may have particular difficulty in matching images of the same person that contain natural day-to-day variations in appearance. We discuss these results in the broader context of individual differences in face matching ability.

AB - Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is commonly referred to as ‘face blindness’, a term that implies a perceptual basis to the condition. However, DP presents as a deficit in face recognition and is diagnosed using memory-based tasks. Here, we test face identification ability in six people with DP, who are severely impaired on face memory tasks, using tasks that do not rely on memory. First, we compared DP to control participants on a standardised test of unfamiliar face matching using facial images taken on the same day and under standardised studio conditions (Glasgow Face Matching Test; GFMT). DP participants did not differ from normative accuracy scores on the GFMT. Second, we tested face matching performance on a test created using images that were sourced from the Internet and so vary substantially due to changes in viewing conditions and in a person’s appearance (Local Heroes Test; LHT). DP participants show significantly poorer matching accuracy on the LHT relative to control participants, for both unfamiliar and familiar face matching. Interestingly, this deficit is specific to ‘match’ trials, suggesting that people with DP may have particular difficulty in matching images of the same person that contain natural day-to-day variations in appearance. We discuss these results in the broader context of individual differences in face matching ability.

U2 - 10.1080/17470218.2016.1173076

DO - 10.1080/17470218.2016.1173076

M3 - Article

SN - 1747-0218

VL - 70

SP - 287

EP - 297

JO - The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

JF - The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

IS - 2

ER -