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Abstract:
The existence of a specific face processing deficit in
autistic children is still debated. Two experiments were designed
in order to search for possible abnormal face processing strategies
in autistic children even in absence of performance impairment.
Autistic subjects (mean age = 9 years) were individually matched to
verbal mental age (VMA) and chronological age (CA) subjects. In the
first experiment, subjects had to match faces on the basis of
identity, emotion, gaze direction, gender and lip reading. Results
indicated that all aspects of face processing were deficient in the
autistic population except face identity matching. In the second
study, the same children than those of Experiment 1 were then asked
to match face identity on either low (holistic) or on high (local)
spatial frequency information. Data demonstrated that, contrary to
both VMA and CA groups, the autistic group made more errors when
using low than high spatial frequency cues. This study confirms
face processing peculiarities in autistic population.
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