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    Face identity matching is selectively impaired in developmental prosopagnosia

    Fisher, Katie and Towler, John and Eimer, Martin (2017) Face identity matching is selectively impaired in developmental prosopagnosia. Cortex 89 , pp. 11-27. ISSN 0010-9452.

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    Abstract

    Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) have severe face recognition deficits, but the mechanisms that are responsible for these deficits have not yet been fully identified. We assessed whether the activation of visual working memory for individual faces is selectively impaired in DP. Twelve DPs and twelve age-matched control participants were tested in a task where they reported whether successively presented faces showed the same or two different individuals, and another task where they judged whether the faces showed the same or different facial expressions. Repetitions versus changes of the other currently irrelevant attribute were varied independently. DPs showed impaired performance in the identity task, but performed at the same level as controls in the expression task. An electrophysiological marker for the activation of visual face memory by identity matches (N250r component) was strongly attenuated in the DP group, and the size of this attenuation was correlated with poor performance in a standardized face recognition test. Results demonstrate an identity-specific deficit of visual face memory in DPs. Their reduced sensitivity to identity matches in the presence of other image changes could result from earlier deficits in the perceptual extraction of image-invariant visual identity cues from face images.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Face perception, face recognition, developmental prosopagnosia, event-related potentials, N250r component
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Depositing User: Martin Eimer
    Date Deposited: 19 Jan 2017 15:58
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:31
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/17968

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