TY - JOUR
T1 - Adaptive face space coding in congenital prosopagnosia
T2 - Typical figural aftereffects but abnormal identity aftereffects
AU - Palermo, Romina
AU - Rivolta, Davide
AU - Wilson, C. Ellie
AU - Jeffery, Linda
PY - 2011/12
Y1 - 2011/12
N2 - People with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) report difficulty recognising faces in everyday life and perform poorly on face recognition tests. Here, we investigate whether impaired adaptive face space coding might contribute to poor face recognition in CP. To pinpoint how adaptation may affect face processing, a group of CPs and matched controls completed two complementary face adaptation tasks: the figural aftereffect, which reflects adaptation to general distortions of shape, and the identity aftereffect, which directly taps the mechanisms involved in the discrimination of different face identities. CPs displayed a typical figural aftereffect, consistent with evidence that they are able to process some shape-based information from faces, e.g., cues to discriminate sex. CPs also demonstrated a significant identity aftereffect. However, unlike controls, CPs impression of the identity of the neutral average face was not significantly shifted by adaptation, suggesting that adaptive coding of identity is abnormal in CP. In sum, CPs show reduced aftereffects but only when the task directly taps the use of face norms used to code individual identity. This finding of a reduced face identity aftereffect in individuals with severe face recognition problems is consistent with suggestions that adaptive coding may have a functional role in face recognition.
AB - People with congenital prosopagnosia (CP) report difficulty recognising faces in everyday life and perform poorly on face recognition tests. Here, we investigate whether impaired adaptive face space coding might contribute to poor face recognition in CP. To pinpoint how adaptation may affect face processing, a group of CPs and matched controls completed two complementary face adaptation tasks: the figural aftereffect, which reflects adaptation to general distortions of shape, and the identity aftereffect, which directly taps the mechanisms involved in the discrimination of different face identities. CPs displayed a typical figural aftereffect, consistent with evidence that they are able to process some shape-based information from faces, e.g., cues to discriminate sex. CPs also demonstrated a significant identity aftereffect. However, unlike controls, CPs impression of the identity of the neutral average face was not significantly shifted by adaptation, suggesting that adaptive coding of identity is abnormal in CP. In sum, CPs show reduced aftereffects but only when the task directly taps the use of face norms used to code individual identity. This finding of a reduced face identity aftereffect in individuals with severe face recognition problems is consistent with suggestions that adaptive coding may have a functional role in face recognition.
KW - Adaptive face coding
KW - Developmental
KW - Face recognition
KW - Figural aftereffect
KW - Identity aftereffect
KW - Norm-based coding
KW - Prosopagnosia
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=81855176223&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.09.039
DO - 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.09.039
M3 - Article
SN - 0028-3932
VL - 49
SP - 3801
EP - 3812
JO - Neuropsychologia
JF - Neuropsychologia
IS - 14
ER -