Bennetts Rachel J, Gregory Nicola J, Tree Jeremy, Di Bernardi Luft Caroline, Banissy Michael J, Murray Ebony, Penton Tegan, Bate Sarah
College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University, UK.
Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, UK.
Neuropsychologia. 2022 Sep 9;174:108332. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108332. Epub 2022 Jul 14.
Many studies have attempted to identify the perceptual underpinnings of developmental prosopagnosia (DP). The majority have focused on whether holistic and configural processing mechanisms are impaired in DP. However, previous work suggests that there is substantial heterogeneity in holistic and configural processing within the DP population; further, there is disagreement as to whether any deficits are face-specific or reflect a broader perceptual deficit. This study used a data-driven approach to examine whether there are systematic patterns of variability in DP that reflect different underpinning perceptual deficits. A group of individuals with DP (N = 37) completed a cognitive battery measuring holistic/configural and featural processing in faces and non-face objects. A two-stage cluster analysis on data from the Cambridge Face Perception Test identified two subgroups of DPs. Across several tasks, the first subgroup (N = 21) showed typical patterns of holistic/configural processing (measured via inversion effects); the second (N = 16) was characterised by reduced or abolished inversion effects compared to age-matched control participants (N = 91). The subgroups did not differ on tasks measuring upright face matching, object matching, non-face holistic processing, or composite effects. These findings indicate two separable pathways to face recognition impairment, one characterised by impaired configural processing and the other potentially by impaired featural processing. Comparisons to control participants provide some preliminary evidence that the deficit in featural processing may extend to some non-face stimuli. Our results demonstrate the utility of examining both the variability between and consistency across individuals with DP as a means of illuminating our understanding of face recognition in typical and atypical populations.
许多研究试图确定发展性面孔失认症（DP）的感知基础。大多数研究都集中在DP患者的整体和构型加工机制是否受损。然而，先前的研究表明，DP患者群体在整体和构型加工方面存在很大的异质性；此外，对于任何缺陷是否是面部特异性的，或者是否反映了更广泛的感知缺陷，也存在分歧。本研究采用数据驱动的方法来检验DP患者中是否存在反映不同潜在感知缺陷的系统变异性模式。一组DP患者（N = 37）完成了一组认知测试，测量面部和非面部物体的整体/构型以及特征加工。对剑桥面部感知测试的数据进行两阶段聚类分析，确定了DP患者的两个亚组。在多个任务中，第一个亚组（N = 21）表现出典型的整体/构型加工模式（通过倒置效应测量）；第二个亚组（N = 16）与年龄匹配的对照参与者（N = 91）相比，其倒置效应减弱或消失。这两个亚组在测量正立面部匹配、物体匹配、非面部整体加工或合成效应的任务上没有差异。这些发现表明存在两条可分离的面孔识别受损途径，一条以构型加工受损为特征，另一条可能以特征加工受损为特征。与对照参与者的比较提供了一些初步证据，表明特征加工缺陷可能扩展到一些非面部刺激。我们的结果证明了检查DP患者个体之间的变异性和个体内部的一致性作为一种手段，有助于加深我们对典型和非典型人群面孔识别的理解。
