Face Perception Deficits in Developmental Prosopagnosia

Face recognition is a fundamental cognitive function that is essential for social interaction – yet not everyone has it. Developmental prosopagnosia is a lifelong condition in which people have severe difficulty recognising faces but have normal intellect and no brain damage. Despite much research, the component processes of face recognition that are impaired in developmental prosopagnosia are not well understood. Two core processes are face perception, being the formation of visual representations of a currently seen face, and face memory, being the storage, maintenance, and retrieval of those representations. Most studies of developmental prosopagnosia focus on face memory deficits, but a few recent studies indicate that face perception deficits might also be important. Characterising face perception in developmental prosopagnosia is crucial for a better understanding of the condition. In this thesis, I addressed this issue in a large-scale experiment with 108 developmental prosopagnosics and 136 matched controls. I assessed face perception abilities with multiple measures and ran a broad range of analyses to establish the severity, scope, and nature of face perception deficits in developmental prosopagnosia. Three major results stand out. First, face perception deficits in developmental prosopagnosia were severe, and could be comparable in size to face memory deficits. Second, the face perception deficits were widespread, affecting the whole sample rather than a subset of individuals. Third, the deficits were mainly driven by impairments to mechanisms specialised for processing upright faces. Further analyses revealed several other features of the deficits, including the use of atypical and inconsistent strategies for perceiving faces, difficulties matching the same face across different pictures, equivalent impact of lighting and viewpoint variations in face images, and atypical perceptual and non-perceptual components of test performance. Overall, my thesis shows that face perception deficits are more central to developmental prosopagnosia than previously thought and motivates further research on the issue.