Normal greeble learning in a severe case of developmental prosopagnosia.
A central question in cognitive neuroscience is whether mechanisms exist that are specialized for particular domains. One of the most commonly cited examples of a domain-specific competence is the human ability to recognize upright faces. However, according to a widely discussed alternative hypothesis, face recognition is instead performed by mechanisms specialized for processing any object class for which an individual has expertise. Faces, according to this domain-general hypothesis, are just one example of an expert class. Nonface object expertise has been intensively investigated using a training procedure involving an artificial stimulus class known as greebles. A key prediction of this hypothesis is that individuals with face recognition impairments will also have impairments with other categories that control subjects have expertise with. Our results show that a man with severe prosopagnosia performed normally throughout the standard greeble training procedure. These findings indicate that face recognition and greeble recognition rely on separate mechanisms.
Vision Sciences Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. brad@wjh.harvard.edu
Bradley C
BC
Duchaine
Kerry
K
Dingle
Edward
E
Butterworth
Ken
K
Nakayama
D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology