Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Cortex. 2012 Jun;48(6):689-700. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2011.03.005. Epub 2011 Mar 15.
In the current study we examined the recognition of facial expressions embedded in emotionally expressive bodies in case LG, an individual with a rare form of developmental visual agnosia (DVA) who suffers from severe prosopagnosia. Neuropsychological testing demonstrated that LG's agnosia is characterized by profoundly impaired visual integration. Unlike individuals with typical developmental prosopagnosia who display specific difficulties with face identity (but typically not expression) recognition, LG was also impaired at recognizing isolated facial expressions. By contrast, he successfully recognized the expressions portrayed by faceless emotional bodies handling affective paraphernalia. When presented with contextualized faces in emotional bodies his ability to detect the emotion expressed by a face did not improve even if it was embedded in an emotionally-congruent body context. Furthermore, in contrast to controls, LG displayed an abnormal pattern of contextual influence from emotionally-incongruent bodies. The results are interpreted in the context of a general integration deficit in DVA, suggesting that impaired integration may extend from the level of the face to the level of the full person.
在当前的研究中，我们检查了在 LG 的情况下嵌入在富有表情的身体中的面部表情的识别，LG 是一位患有罕见发育性视觉失认症 (DVA) 的个体，患有严重的面孔失认症。神经心理学测试表明，LG 的失认症的特征是严重的视觉整合受损。与表现出特定面孔身份（但通常不是表情）识别困难的典型发育性面孔失认症个体不同，LG 也难以识别孤立的面部表情。相比之下，他成功地识别了处理情感用具的无脸情感身体所描绘的表情。当呈现带有情感身体的上下文化面孔时，即使面孔嵌入到与情感一致的身体背景中，他也无法提高检测面部所表达的情感的能力。此外，与对照组相比，LG 显示出来自情感不一致身体的异常上下文影响模式。这些结果在 DVA 中的一般整合缺陷的背景下进行了解释，表明受损的整合可能从面部水平扩展到完整人的水平。
