title: Impaired holistic coding of facial expression and facial identity in congenital prosopagnosia.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD); Department of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia; Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS), Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia. Electronic address: Romina.Palermo@anu.edu.au.
authors.forename: Romina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Palermo
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS), Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Megan L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Willis
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS), Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rivolta
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD); Department of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
authors.forename: Elinor
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: McKone
authors.affiliation: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS), Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
authors.forename: C Ellie
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders (CCD); MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge CB2 7EF, England, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Calder
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019964:Mood Disorders / Q000209:etiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000150:complications / Q000151:congenital; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult