Deficits in sensitivity to spacing after early visual deprivation in humans: A comparison of human faces, monkey faces, and houses

Rachel A. Robbins*, Mayu Nishimura, Catherine J. Mondloch, Terri L. Lewis, Daphne Maurer

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

49 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Early visual deprivation caused by bilateral congenital cataracts produces deficits in discriminating faces that differ in the spacing of features, but not in feature shape (Le Grand et al. [2001] Nature 410: 810). We investigated whether these deficits are specific to human faces by testing patients' ability to discriminate between stimuli differing only in feature spacing in human and monkey faces (Experiment 1) and in houses (Experiment 2). Patients, as a group, showed deficits on only one task: they had lower accuracy than normal in discriminating feature spacing in human faces. In contrast, they were normal in discriminating feature spacing in monkey faces and in houses. The results suggest that early visual experience is necessary to set up (or preserve) the neural architecture used for processing human faces, but not for processing objects in general.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)775-781
Number of pages7
JournalDevelopmental Psychobiology
Volume52
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2010
Externally publishedYes

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