Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK.
Autism Res. 2013 Dec;6(6):550-60. doi: 10.1002/aur.1318. Epub 2013 Jul 25.
The ability to remember faces is critical for the development of social competence. From childhood to adulthood, we acquire a high level of expertise in the recognition of facial images, and neural processes become dedicated to sustaining competence. Many people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have poor face recognition memory; changes in hairstyle or other non-facial features in an otherwise familiar person affect their recollection skills. The observation implies that they may not use the configuration of the inner face to achieve memory competence, but bolster performance in other ways. We aimed to test this hypothesis by comparing the performance of a group of high-functioning unmedicated adolescents with ASD and a matched control group on a "surprise" face recognition memory task. We compared their memory for unfamiliar faces with their memory for images of houses. To evaluate the role that is played by peripheral cues in assisting recognition memory, we cropped both sets of pictures, retaining only the most salient central features. ASD adolescents had poorer recognition memory for faces than typical controls, but their recognition memory for houses was unimpaired. Cropping images of faces did not disproportionately influence their recall accuracy, relative to controls. House recognition skills (cropped and uncropped) were similar in both groups. In the ASD group only, performance on both sets of task was closely correlated, implying that memory for faces and other complex pictorial stimuli is achieved by domain-general (non-dedicated) cognitive mechanisms. Adolescents with ASD apparently do not use domain-specialized processing of inner facial cues to support face recognition memory.
记住人脸的能力对于社交能力的发展至关重要。从儿童期到成年期，我们在识别面部图像方面获得了很高的专业水平，神经过程也专门用于维持这种能力。许多自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者的人脸识别记忆能力较差；即使是熟悉的人改变了发型或其他非面部特征，也会影响他们的回忆能力。这一观察结果表明，他们可能不会利用面部内部结构来获得记忆能力，而是通过其他方式来提高表现。我们旨在通过比较一组未经药物治疗的高功能 ASD 青少年和匹配的对照组在“惊喜”人脸识别记忆任务中的表现来检验这一假设。我们比较了他们对陌生面孔的记忆和对房屋图像的记忆。为了评估外围线索在辅助识别记忆中的作用，我们裁剪了两组图片，只保留最显著的中心特征。与典型对照组相比，ASD 青少年对面孔的识别记忆较差，但对房屋的识别记忆不受影响。相对于对照组，裁剪面孔图像并没有不成比例地影响他们的召回准确性。两组的房屋识别技能（裁剪和未裁剪）相似。仅在 ASD 组中，两组任务的表现都密切相关，这表明对人脸和其他复杂图像刺激的记忆是通过一般领域（非专用）认知机制实现的。ASD 青少年显然不会利用内部面部线索的特定领域处理来支持人脸识别记忆。
