The ability to recognize an individual face is essential to human social interaction. Even subtle errors in this process can have huge implications for the way we relate to social partners. Because autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in social interaction, researchers have theorized about the potential role of atypical face identity processing to the symptom profile of ASD for more than 40 years. We conducted an empirical meta-analysis of this large literature to determine whether and to what extent face identity processing is atypical in ASD compared to typically developing (TD) individuals. We also tested the hypotheses that the deficit is selective to face identity recognition, not perception, and that methodological variation across studies moderates the magnitude of the estimated deficit. We identified 112 studies (5,390 participants) that generated 172 effect sizes from both recognition (k ϭ 119) and discrimination (k ϭ 53) paradigms. We used state-of-the-art approaches for assessing the validity and robustness of the analyses. We found comparable and large deficits in ASD for both face identity recognition (Hedge's g ϭ Ϫ0.86) and discrimination (Hedge's g ϭ Ϫ0.82). This means that the score of an average ASD individual is nearly 1 SD below the average TD individual on tasks assessing both aspects of face identity processing. These deficits generalize across age groups, sex, IQ scores, and task paradigms. These findings suggest that deficits in face identity processing may represent a core deficit in ASD. Public Significance StatementWe present a data-driven analysis of the face recognition research in autism from the last 40 years. Our findings indicate that people with ASD struggle to process information about the identity of a face. This deficit is large, such that on average 80.5% of ASD individuals perform worse than typical individuals on tests of face identity processing. This impairment likely contributes to ASD-specific difficulties with social interaction, which require the ability to identify social partners as unique individuals.

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and the Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) are 2 of the most common psychological tests used in clinical care and research in neurology. Newly revised versions of both instruments (WAIS-IV and WMS-IV) have recently been published and are increasingly being adopted by the neuropsychology community. There have been significant changes in the structure and content of both scales, leading to the potential for inaccurate patient classification if algorithms developed using their predecessors are employed. There are presently insufficient clinical data in neurologic populations to insure their appropriate application to neuropsychological evaluations. We provide a perspective on these important new neuropsychological instruments, comment on the pressures to adopt these tests in the absence of an appropriate evidence base supporting their incremental validity, and describe the potential negative impact on both patient care and continuing research applications. Neurology Characterizing cognitive abilities is an important part of the comprehensive neurologic workup in many patient populations (e.g., dementia, traumatic brain injury, movement disorders, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis). In these settings, neuropsychological performance is used to identify procedure-related risk factors, cognitive disease effects, or to measure the benefits or adverse events associated with various therapies. Neuropsychologists rely heavily on standardized measures of IQ and memory when making their diagnostic formulations.Like new software releases, psychological test revisions purportedly offer important improvements over previous versions. Test revisions permit modification of test material to allow for content updating to reflect current models of cognitive function, to improve psychometric test properties and operating characteristics, or simply to make test administration and scoring easier. Test revision also insures that there has been no upward drift in test scores over time, and that "average" test performance across the population for tests such as the Wechsler scales remains at 100. 1In North America, the most common IQ and memory tests are the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) and Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS).2 Recent revisions of these popular instruments (i.e., WAIS-IV/WMS-IV) were published in 2008/2009, and are increasingly being adopted. As with previous WAIS/WMS revisions, there have been substantial changes including scale indices and subtest content and administration.Revisions of these scales have important effects on test usage and applicability in clinical and research settings. We describe how the recently revised WAIS and WMS may impact users and consumers of these instruments. WECHSLER ADULT INTELLIGENCE SCALE-FOURTH EDITIONDecades of research have demonstrated that the verbal IQ (VIQ) and performance IQ (PIQ) scores derived from the Wechsler IQ scales are

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In this study state-dependent learning in younger and older adults was compared. State was manipulated by having participants rest or exercise for 5 min, followed by exposure to 3 learning trials of a 20-item word list. After a 20-min delay, participants engaged either in the congruent or in the incongruent activity followed by free-recall trial, cued-recall, and recognition tests. Heart rate, blood pressure, and self-report of distress measures verified that the experimental conditions influenced the participants' physiologic state, but the distracter tasks did not. There was no difference in learning that was due to initial exercise condition, but both age groups showed greater recall when state was congruent before learning and delayed recall. This replicates previous research in which consistent state-dependent learning effects in younger adults were found and supports research suggesting that older adults spontaneously use contextual information to facilitate recall. The demonstration of state-dependent learning in older adults is discussed as an example of implicit memory not affected by aging.

The agnosias are rare disorders in which a patient with brain damage becomes unable to recognize or appreciate the identity or nature of sensory stimuli. Clinical examination of the patient reveals a profound, modality-specific recognition impairment that cannot be fully explained by problems in elementary sensory processing, mental deterioration, attentional disturbances, aphasic misnaming, or unfamiliarity with the stimuli used to assess recognition abilities. Classically, a distinction between apperceptive and associative forms of agnosia has been made whereby the patient with apperceptive agnosia is said to have deficits in early stages of perceptual processing, whereas the patient with associative agnosia either does not display such problems or does so to a degree not sufficient to substantially impair the ability to perform perceptual operations. The associative agnosic patient can typically draw, copy, or match unidentified objects, whereas the apperceptive agnosic patient cannot. This distinction has been clinically useful, although it is clear that nearly all agnosic patients have some degree of perceptual ("apperceptive") disturbance. It should be remembered that adequate copying or matching by itself does not indicate normal perceptual processing (see Bauer & Demery, 2003;Farah, 1990).Clinical assessment of the putative agnosic patient has two fundamental goals. First, the possibility that the recognition disturbance exists because of elementary sensory disturbance, 508