Face Identity Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders: a Review of Behavioral
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Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012) 1060–1084 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews journa l homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/neubiorev Review Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: A review of behavioral studies Sarah Weigelt ∗, Kami Koldewyn, Nancy Kanwisher Department of Brain and Cognitive Science and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Face recognition – the ability to recognize a person from their facial appearance – is essential for normal Received 2 September 2011 social interaction. Face recognition deficits have been implicated in the most common disorder of social Received in revised form interaction: autism. Here we ask: is face identity recognition in fact impaired in people with autism? 23 November 2011 Reviewing behavioral studies we find no strong evidence for a qualitative difference in how facial identity Accepted 14 December 2011 is processed between those with and without autism: markers of typical face identity recognition, such as the face inversion effect, seem to be present in people with autism. However, quantitatively – i.e., how Keywords: well facial identity is remembered or discriminated – people with autism perform worse than typical Autism individuals. This impairment is particularly clear in face memory and in face perception tasks in which a Autism spectrum disorders delay intervenes between sample and test, and less so in tasks with no memory demand. Although some Asperger’s syndrome Pervasive developmental disorders evidence suggests that this deficit may be specific to faces, further evidence on this question is necessary. Neurodevelopmental disorders Face perception © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Face recognition Identity perception Face inversion effect Behavioral studies Psychophysics Contents 1. Introduction . 1061 1.1. Inclusion/exclusion criteria for the review . 1061 2. Face markers . 1061 2.1. The face inversion effect . 1062 2.1.1. Statistical criteria . 1062 2.1.2. Studies investigating the face inversion effect directly . 1062 2.1.3. Studies investigating other aspects of face identity recognition, but in that used upright and inverted faces . 1065 2.1.4. Studies using upright and inverted faces in other experimental paradigms . 1065 2.2. The part-whole effect . 1066 2.2.1. Statistical criteria . 1066 2.3. The composite effect . 1066 2.3.1. Statistical criteria . 1069 2.4. Inner versus outer features . 1069 2.4.1. Statistical criteria . 1069 2.5. Face space—face adaptation aftereffects . 1069 2.6. The Thatcher illusion . 1070 2.6.1. Statistical criteria . 1070 2.7. The left side bias. 1070 2.8. Summary of part 2: face markers . 1070 ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 617 258 0670; fax: +1 617 258 8654. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Weigelt), [email protected] (K. Koldewyn), [email protected] (N. Kanwisher). 0149-7634/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.12.008 S. Weigelt et al. / Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36 (2012) 1060–1084 1061 3. Face identity memory and perception. 1070 3.1. Face memory . 1070 3.2. Simple face perception . 1075 3.2.1. No memory demand—no difference in simple face perception between ASD and typical individuals . 1077 3.2.2. Memory demand—differences in simple face perception between ASD and typical individuals . 1077 3.3. Fine-grained face perception. 1078 3.4. Standardized face recognition tests . 1079 3.5. Summary of part 3: face identity memory and perception . 1080 4. Grand summary . 1080 Acknowledgments . 1081 Appendix A. Appendix . ..