title: Social Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Face Tuning.
abstract: Many neurological, neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and psychosomatic disorders are characterized by impairments in visual social cognition, body language reading, and facial assessment of a social counterpart. Yet a wealth of research indicates that individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit remarkable concern for social stimuli and face fascination. Here individuals with Williams syndrome were presented with a set of Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). The primary advantage of these images is that single components do not explicitly trigger face-specific processing, whereas in face images commonly used for investigating face perception (such as photographs or depictions), the mere occurrence of typical cues already implicates face presence. In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Strikingly, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibited profound deficits in recognition of the Face-n-Food images as a face: they did not report seeing a face on the images, which typically developing controls effortlessly recognized as a face, and gave overall fewer face responses. This suggests atypical face tuning in Williams syndrome. The outcome is discussed in the light of a general pattern of social cognition in Williams syndrome and brain mechanisms underpinning face processing.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Unit, Department of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance, Medical School, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen Germany.
authors.forename: Marina A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Pavlova
authors.affiliation: Child Clinical Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva Switzerland.
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Heiz
authors.affiliation: Department of Women's Health, Women's Health Research Institute, University Hospital, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen Germany.
authors.forename: Alexander N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Sokolov
authors.affiliation: Child Clinical Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Geneva, Geneva Switzerland.
authors.forename: Koviljka
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Barisnikov
keywords: Face-n-Food paradigm; Williams syndrome; brain mechanisms; face encoding; face resemblance; social cognition