title: Face matching impairment in developmental prosopagnosia.
abstract: 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 standardized test of unfamiliar face matching using facial images taken on the same day and under standardized studio conditions (Glasgow Face Matching Test; GFMT). Scores for 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 varied substantially due to changes in viewing conditions and in a person's appearance (Local Heroes Test; LHT). DP participants showed significantly poorer matching accuracy on the LHT than 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.
authors.affiliation: a School of Psychology , University of New South Wales , Sydney , NSW , Australia.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: b School of Psychology , University of East London , London , UK.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rivolta
authors.affiliation: c Department of Psychology , University of York , York , UK.
authors.forename: A Mike
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Burton
authors.affiliation: d Department of Psychology , University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee , Milwaukee , WI , USA.
authors.forename: Shahd
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Al-Janabi
authors.affiliation: e ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, and School of Psychology , University of Western Australia , Perth , WA , Australia.
authors.forename: Romina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Palermo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001315:Australia; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D020238:Prosopagnosia / Q000150:complications*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D006113:United Kingdom
keywords: Congenital prosopagnosia; Face perception; Face recognition; Image variability; Unfamiliar face matching