Face processing in autistics: Evidence for a generalised deficit?

Several studies have recently highlighted specific impairments in face processing in autistic subjects (memory for faces, recognition of emotional expressions, identity recognition of familiar faces). The goal of the present study was to explore whether there was a generalised face processing deficit in this population. A variety of tasks examining different, and possibly dissociative, aspects of face processing was investigated. The results of autistic subjects were compared with data from (a) a group of children with Down syndrome and (b) two individually matched control groups. The study suggests that autistic subjects are impaired in the various face processing tasks, but not always to the same extent.     

Development of Recognition of Face Parts from Unfamiliar Faces

The present study examined developmental changes in the ability to recognize face parts. In Experiment 1, participants were familiarized with whole faces and given a recognition test with old and new eyes, noses, mouths, inner faces, outer faces, or whole faces. Adults were above chance in their recognition of the eye and mouth regions. However, children did not naturally encode and recognize face parts independently of the entire face. In addition, all age groups showed comparable inner and outer face recognition, except for 8‐ to 9‐year‐olds who showed a recognition advantage for outer faces. In Experiment 2, when participants were familiarized with eyes, noses, or mouths and tested with eyes, noses, or mouths, respectively, all ages showed above‐chance recognition of eyes and mouths. Thirteen‐ to 14‐year‐olds were adult‐like in their recognition of the eye region, but mouth recognition continued to develop beyond 14 years of age. Nose recognition was above chance among 13‐ to 14‐year‐olds, but recognition scores remained low even in adulthood. The present findings reveal unique developmental trajectories in the use of isolated facial regions in face recognition and suggest that featural cues (as a class) have a different ontogenetic course relative to holistic and configural cues. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unfamiliar face recognition in children with autistic spectrum disorders

We investigated unfamiliar face recognition in low‐functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) using a ‘part‐of‐face’ method. This method has not previously been used for unfamiliar faces with this population. The ‘part‐of‐face’ procedure provides measures of both face recognition accuracy and of processing style. We compared the performance of the children with ASD with three control groups: children with developmental delay (DD), typically developing (TD) children matched for verbal cognitive ability and TD children matched for chronological age (CA). Compared to the DD group, the ASD group showed similar processing in recognition accuracy and processing style. Compared to the TD children, the ASD group did not show the same level of accuracy as controls of the same CA, instead showing similar performance to younger TD children. However, as both children with ASD and DD showed the same performance, no ASD‐specific deficit was found. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of inner and outer face parts in holistic processing: A developmental study

The effects of inner–outer feature interactions with unfamiliar faces were investigated in 6- and 10-year-old children and adults (20–30 years) to determine their contribution in holistic face vision. Participants completed a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task under two conditions. The congruent condition used whole, inner-only, and outer-only stimuli. The incongruent condition used stimuli combining the inner features from one face with outer features from a novel face, or vice versa. Results yielded strong congruency effects which were moderated by pronounced feature-type asymmetries specific to developmental stage. Adults showed an inner-feature preference during congruent trials, but no asymmetry for incongruent trials. Children showed no asymmetry for congruent trials, but an outer-feature preference for incongruent trials. These findings concur with recent theoretical developments indicating that adults and children are likely to differ in the types of feature-specific information they preferentially encode in face perception, and that holistic effects are moderated differently in adults and children as a function of feature type.     

5岁儿童自我面孔的认知特点

具备自我面孔的识别能力是个体发展中的里程碑,以往的研究大多集中于儿童镜像自我面孔认知能力的发生发展,而缺乏对稍微年长儿童自我面孔识别发展特点的研究。本研究采用逐张呈现被试原本照片以及通过Photoshop改变内外部特征的面孔让儿童进行辨认的方法,考察5岁儿童自我面孔识别的特点。结果发现：（1）5岁儿童能正确识别原本的自我整体面孔,但对自我外部特征和内部特征的识别出现了明显的性别差异;（2）大多数5岁儿童认为发型变化的自我面孔不再是自己的,尤其是更换了异性发型的面孔;（3）儿童对自我面孔的眼睛部位更为敏感。     

Recognizing people from the inner or outer parts of their faces: Developmental data concerning ‘unfamiliar’ faces

Existing data demonstrate a developmental trend in the way in which highly familiar faces are recognized, such that young children rely more on the outer facial features (the hairline, chin and ears) than the inner facial features (the eyes, nose and mouth) and adults demonstrate the reverse pattern. However, little is known about the developmental pattern of importance of inner and outer facial features for recognizing people who are not highly familiar. Here we report a study which attempts to describe this pattern. Using a two‐alternative forced‐choice procedure, we presented 5‐, 7‐, and 9‐year‐olds and adults (N = 22 in each group) with the task of recognizing an experimentally familiarized face (initially seen in a short video) from a still picture of either the whole face, just the inner, or just the outer parts. The results showed that, for all ages, recognition was faster (and in most cases, more accurate) for outer features alone than for inner features alone (and was fastest for whole faces). These data demonstrate the importance of outer facial features for the recognition of relatively unfamiliar faces. Taken together with previous findings, they enhance our picture of the effects of age and experience with individual faces on recognition and configural processing.     

自闭症幼儿的情感认知特点的实验研究

本实验采用3(组别)×4(基本情绪)×3(实验材料)×2(实验条件)的混合设计的方法对平均心理年龄24个月的6名自闭症幼儿和心理年龄与之相近的6名正常儿童和6名弱智儿童的情感认知特点进行了比较性的研究。实验结果表明:在“语言提示”条件下,自闭症幼儿的正答率远远低于正常儿童和弱智儿童,但在“表情提示”条件下,自闭症幼儿与弱智幼儿几乎没差距,在对“愤怒”和“惊恐”等情绪的认知中,正答率高于弱智幼儿。这意味着自闭症幼儿可能运用了其他的替代策略进行情感认知。     

注意线索对自闭特质个体疼痛共情的影响：来自事件相关电位的证据

自闭特质个体在日常生活中表现出共情缺损, 但其程度较自闭症谱系障碍个体低, 并且注意线索和特异性的面孔加工可能会影响他们的共情加工进程。因此, 本研究采用事件相关电位(ERP)技术, 以疼痛面孔图片作为刺激材料, 让自闭特质组和控制组分别完成疼痛判断任务(该任务中被试的注意指向疼痛线索)和吸引力判断任务(该任务中被试的注意不指向疼痛线索)。结果发现, 相比控制组, 自闭特质组在吸引力判断任务中疼痛面孔图片诱发的P3波幅更大, 而在疼痛判断任务中两组没有显著差异。这表明注意线索会影响自闭特质个体对他人疼痛面孔的共情反应, 当自闭特质个体不注意他人面孔的疼痛线索时, 其疼痛共情能力会减弱。     

自闭症谱系障碍儿童对面孔加工的同龄偏向效应

采用视觉追踪技术,探讨自闭症谱系障碍(autism spectrum disorders, ASD)儿童面孔加工的同龄偏向效应。实验1选取19名ASD儿童和23名生理年龄匹配的普通儿童(typically developing, TD)为被试,通过自由观看同龄和异龄中性面孔,探讨ASD儿童是否存在面孔加工的同龄偏向效应;实验2选取22名ASD儿童和生理年龄匹配的25名TD儿童,通过自由观看快乐、愤怒和恐惧面孔,探讨情绪对ASD儿童面孔加工同龄偏向的影响。结果发现,(1)ASD儿童对同龄中性面孔的注视时间显著大于异龄中性面孔;(2)ASD儿童在愤怒和恐惧情绪下对同龄面孔的注视时间显著大于异龄面孔,而在快乐情绪下同龄和异龄的注视时间则无显著差异。这表明ASD儿童对面孔的注视加工存在同龄偏向效应,且受情绪的影响。     

What do children look at in an adult face with which they are personally familiar?

Adults recognize familiar faces better by their internal than external face parts. It is not clear when children achieve this internal face part advantage, however, previous research has suggested that it emerges after the age of seven years. The present study was the first study to show personally familiar adult faces (school staff) to children aged 5–6, 7–8 and 10–11 years, and we asked the children to identify which faces were familiar. An internal face part advantage was found at all ages.     

同龄效应的类别化-个体化模型

针对面孔认知偏好的类别化-个体化模型,探讨该模型中的知觉经验、加工方式和动机水平对本龄效应的影响。结果表明增加对异龄面孔的知觉经验、个体化加工异龄面孔及提高加工异龄面孔的动机都能有效改善对异龄面孔的再认,减少本龄效应量。这说明本龄效应遵循类别化-个体化模型,且在类别化-个体化模型中本龄效应与本族效应加工原理相仿。。     

SELF-STIMULATION AND LEARNING IN AUTISTIC CHILDREN: PHYSICAL OR FUNCTIONAL INCOMPATIBILITY?1

This study investigated whether an observed inverse relationship between self-stimulation and learning in autistic children is due to a physical inability of the subject to use the same body part for self-stimulation and task responding, or whether self-stimulation “distracts” the subject from task responding. Four actively self-stimulating autistic children were taught two discrimination tasks; one required a response that physically interferred with their self-stimulation; the other did not. Results were: (a) all subjects responded similarly across both tasks; (b) the three subjects with higher mental age scores learned both tasks without external suppression of self-stimulation; and (c) none of the subjects showed an inverse relationship between self-stimulation and learning. The study demonstrated that elimination of self-stimulation is not a necessary prerequisite for the acquisition of a new behavior in all autistic children.     

Face Recognition in Young Children: When the Whole is Greater than the Sum of Its Parts

Do young children recognize faces differently than older children and adults? Previous research (Carey & Diamond, 1977) has suggested that, before the age of 8, children recognize a face by its individual features; after the age of 8, they switch to a whole-face (holistic) recognition strategy. The part-whole paradigm provides a suitable test for the encoding switch hypothesis. In this paradigm, memory for a face part is probed when the part is presented in isolation and in the whole face. The difference in performance between the two test conditions serves as an index of holistic processing. Results from such studies reveal that even 6-year-olds remember parts from upright faces better when tested in the whole-face context than in isolation. When faces are inverted, the holistic processes of young children and older children are disrupted. These results indicate that counter to the encoding switch hypothesis, children recognize faces holistically by 6 years of age.     

Holistic processing of shape cues in face identification: Evidence from face inversion,composite faces,and acquired prosopagnosia

According to a classical functional architecture of face processing (Bruce & Young, 1986), sex processing on faces is a parallel function to individual face recognition. One consequence of the model is thus that sex categorization on faces is not influenced by face familiarity. However, the behavioural and neuro-psychological evidences supporting this dissociation are yet equivocal. To test the independence between sex processing on faces and familiar face recognition, familiar (learned) faces were morphed with new faces, generating facial continua of visual similarity to familiar faces. First, a pilot experiment shown that subjects familiarized with one extreme of the face continuum roughly perceive one half of the continuum (60 to 100% of visual similarity to familiar faces) as made of familiar faces and the other part as unfamiliar. In the experiment proper, subjects were familiarized with faces and tested in a sex decision task made on faces at the different steps of the continua. Subjects were significantly quicker at telling the sex of faces perceived as familiar (60-100%), and the effect was not observed in a control (untrained) group. These results indicate that familiar face representations are activated before sex categorization is completed, and can facilitate this processing. The nature of the interaction between sex categorization on faces and familiar face recognition is discussed.     

Familiarity,Target Set and False Positives in Face Recognition

Distinctiveness of a face predicts both miss errors (MEs) and false positives (FPs) but correlations between these errors are low (e.g. Hancock, Burton, & Bruce, 1996). To investigate this, distinctiveness and personal familiarity were analysed as predictors of MEs and FPs in a face recognition experiment. Faces were assigned to three groups, which meant that each set were distractor faces for two different sets of targets. Mean ratings of distinctiveness predicted MEs, whereas familiarity predicted FPs only if individual ratings were used. The degree to which subjects were consistent in their ratings and performance over different faces was also considered. Good subject consistency was found on FPs when the subjects saw the same target faces. If subjects who had seen different target faces were compared, then the consistency of FPs was lower than the consistency of MEs. The results imply that distinctiveness predicts MEs as a general property of the population of faces, whereas familiarity predicts FPs according to the idiosyncrasies of subjects.     

Memory for Faces in Children with Autism

Previous research has established that children with Autistic Disorder have deficits in aspects of social cognition and in verbal memory, but research on social memory is limited. Twenty-four autistic boys aged 7 to 12 years and normal controls matched for verbal mental age were administered parallel social and nonsocial matching and memory tasks. Results showed that the children with autism were impaired relative to the normal children on the social (face) memory task only. Furthermore, of the four experimental tasks, the social memory task had the highest and most consistent correlations with measures of social development and adaptive skills. Whereas the normal children used the special status of faces to recall them more easily than objects, the children with autism showed equal recall of objects and faces.     

Attention to low- and high-spatial frequencies in categorizing facial identities, emotions and gender in children with autism

This study was aimed at investigating face categorization strategies in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Performance of 17 children with ASD was compared to that of 17 control children in a face-matching task, including hybrid faces (composed of two overlapping faces of different spatial bandwidths) and either low- or high-pass filtered faces. Participants were asked to match faces on the basis of identity, emotion or gender. Results revealed that children with ASD used the same strategies as controls when matching faces by gender. By contrast, in the identity and the emotion conditions, children with ASD showed a high-pass bias (i.e., preference for local information), contrary to controls. Consistent with previous studies on autism, these findings suggest that children with ASD do use atypical (local-oriented) strategies to process faces.     

Age biases in face processing: the effects of experience across development

In this paper, I review studies investigating discrimination and recognition abilities for faces of different ages in children and adults. Contrary to the earlier assertion that own-age faces are better recognized than other-age faces (own-age bias; OAB), I discuss recent evidence for a processing advantage for adult versus non-adult faces. This evidence is interpreted as suggesting that the precocious and continuous exposure to adult faces may shape the individual's face representation across development. Moreover, by testing how experience with faces of various ages acquired at different times in development modulates face-processing skills, this evidence shows that plasticity of face recognition abilities decreases with age, but early-acquired experience has enduring effects that impact our ability to learn from encounters with new types of faces in adulthood.     

Effects of the beholder's age on the perception of facial attractiveness

Children have been shown to prefer faces rated as highly attractive by adults over faces rated as quite unattractive. We investigated to what extent this agreement holds not only for the general direction of preferences but for preference strengths as well. In a choice experiment, we presented 40 nine-year-old girls and their mothers and 40 twelve-year-old girls and their mothers with pairs of women's and girls' faces and asked the subjects to pick the face that appeared prettier to them. Preference frequencies and simple attractiveness scales derived from these preference frequencies by fitting the Bradley-Terry-Luce rule (Luce, D. R. (1959). Individual choice behavior: a theoretical analysis. New York: Wiley) were compared across subject groups. For the women's faces, we found no difference in preferences between nine-year-olds, twelve-year-olds, and adults, neither in direction nor in strength. For the girls' faces, we also found no major differences in preference direction, however, we did find reliable differences in preference strengths. To a considerable part these differences were due to the fact that the children showed less pronounced preferences between face stimuli than the adults. These results suggest a role of developmental factors in the perception of facial attractiveness.     

Affective exchanges between young autistic children and their mothers

This study examined autistic children's social behavior, affect, and use of gaze during naturalistic interactions with their mothers. Sixteen autistic children, 30 to 70 months of age, and 16 normal children, matched on receptive language, participated. Children and their mothers were videotaped during three situations: a free-play period, a more structured period during which communicative demand was made on the child, and a face-to-face interaction. In all three situations, autistic and normal children did not differ in the frequency or duration of gaze at mother's face. In the one condition (face-to-face interaction) during which affective expressions were coded, autistic and normal children also were not found to differ significantly in the frequency or duration of smiles displayed, and neither group displayed frowns. However, autistic children were much less likely than normal children to combine their smiles with eye contact in a single act that conveyed communicative intent. Autistic and normal children were not found to differ in the percentages of smiles they displayed to social versus nonsocial events. However, when autistic children's responses to mother's smiles specifically were examined, it was found that they were much less likely to smile in response to mother's smiles than were normal children. Finally, it was found that mothers o f autistic children displayed fewer smiles and were less likely to smile in response to their children's smiles, when compared with mothers o f normal children. These findings suggest that the autistic child's unusual affective behavior may negatively affect the behavior of others.We wish to thank the children and their mothers who participated in this study, and the staff at Division TEACCH at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their help in recruiting children for the study. Harriet Reingold generously allowed us to videotape the children in her infant observation laboratory at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Cathy Lord provided videotapes of some of the autistic children and their mothers. Mary Evers assisted in data collection. Kerry Hogan assisted in the coding of data; her help is gratefully acknowledged. The study was supported by a grant from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.