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Abstract:
The present studies examined the presence of holistic face
recognition processes in typical children and adults and children
and adults with autism using the part-whole method of Tanaka and
Farah (1993). The premise of this approach is that if the
individual features of a face are processed holistically, they will
be recognized more readily in the context of the whole face than in
isolation. Participants received 72 computerized, immediate
recognition test trials forcing a choice between the original face
and a foil face differing by one feature (eyes, nose, or mouth) and
alternately presented in whole vs. part and upright vs. inverted
conditions. As expected, typical 9- and 11-year-old children and
adults exhibited a whole advantage for upright but not inverted
faces and were most accurate when face recognition depended on the
eyes. In contrast, neither children nor adults with autism
demonstrated the typical advantage for eye recognition, performing
as well on mouths as eyes overall. Whereas adults with autism did
not show a whole advantage for recognition of any face feature in
the upright condition, children with autism exhibited a selective
whole advantage for mouths. These findings converge with prior
observations of autistic children's unusual reliance on the mouth
in face identification and suggest that aberrant face processing
strategies are implicated in the profound social deficits that
characterize autism.
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