Both identity and non-identity face perception tasks predict developmental prosopagnosia and face recognition ability

Abstract

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is characterised by deficits in face identification. However, there is debate about whether these deficits are primarily perceptual, and whether they extend to other face processing tasks (e.g., identifying emotion, age, and gender; detecting faces in scenes). In this study, 30 participants with DP and 75 controls completed a battery of eight tasks assessing four domains of face perception (identity; emotion; age and gender; face detection). The DP group performed worse than the control group on both identity perception tasks, and one task from each other domain. Both identity perception tests uniquely predicted DP/control group membership, and performance on two measures of face memory. These findings suggest that deficits in DP may arise from issues with face perception. Some non-identity tasks also predicted DP/control group membership and face memory, even when face identity perception was accounted for. Gender perception and speed of face detection consistently predicted unique variance in group membership and face memory; several other tasks were only associated with some measures of face recognition ability. These findings indicate that face perception deficits in DP may extend beyond identity perception. However, the associations between tasks may also reflect subtle aspects of task demands or stimuli.

Figure 1

Examples of the scrambled scenes stimuli. From left to right: target present (upright face); target present (inverted face); target absent. The face image in the first two examples is present in the bottom row, second tile from the left.

Figure 2

DP and control participant performance on face identity perception tasks.

Figure 3

DP and control participant performance on non-identity face perception tasks: emotion recognition (top row); visual semantic information (middle row); face detection (bottom row).