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The recognition of emotional expression in prosopagnosia: Decoding whole and part faces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2006

BLOSSOM CHRISTA MAREE STEPHAN ,
NORA BREEN  and
DIANA CAINE
BLOSSOM CHRISTA MAREE STEPHAN
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
NORA BREEN
Affiliation:
Neuropsychology Unit, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, Australia
DIANA CAINE
Affiliation:
School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
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Abstract

Prosopagnosia is currently viewed within the constraints of two competing theories of face recognition, one highlighting the analysis of features, the other focusing on configural processing of the whole face. This study investigated the role of feature analysis versus whole face configural processing in the recognition of facial expression. A prosopagnosic patient, SC made expression decisions from whole and incomplete (eyes-only and mouth-only) faces where features had been obscured. SC was impaired at recognizing some (e.g., anger, sadness, and fear), but not all (e.g., happiness) emotional expressions from the whole face. Analyses of his performance on incomplete faces indicated that his recognition of some expressions actually improved relative to his performance on the whole face condition. We argue that in SC interference from damaged configural processes seem to override an intact ability to utilize part-based or local feature cues. (JINS, 2006, 12, 884–895.)

Keywords

Agnosia for facesExpression recognitionInformation processingConfigural processingFeatural processing
Type
NEUROBEHAVIORAL GRAND ROUNDS
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 12 , Issue 6 , November 2006 , pp. 884 - 895
Copyright
© 2006 The International Neuropsychological Society

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