Face perception in high-functioning autistic adults: Evidence for superior processing of face parts, not for a configural face-processing deficit.

Abstract

Configural processing in autism was studied in Experiment 1 by using the face inversion effect. A normal inversion effect was observed in the participants with autism, suggesting intact configural face processing. A priming paradigm using partial or complete faces served in Experiment 2 to assess both local and configural face processing. Overall, normal priming effects were found in participants with autism, irrespective of whether the partial face primes were intuitive face parts (i.e., eyes, nose, etc.) or arbitrary segments. An exception, however, was that participants with autism showed magnified priming with single face parts relative to typically developing control participants. The present findings argue for intact configural processing in autism along with an enhanced processing for individual face parts. The face-processing peculiarities known to characterize autism are discussed on the basis of these results and past congruent results with nonsocial stimuli.

Missing the big picture: impaired development of global shape processing in autism

“…This developmental deficit in perceptual organization processes may be related to limitations in the development of higher-order face and object processing that are so widely reported in autism and that rely heavily on global shape perception [Joseph & Tanaka, 2003;Klin et al, 2002;Lahaie et al, 2006]. One study reported an association between impairments in global shape perception in the GL and MPP tasks and in face discrimination abilities in adults with autism [Behrmann et al, 2006].…”

“…At the same time, individuals with autism appear to be limited in their ability to derive organized wholes from perceptual parts, which has been linked to their limited use of gestalt grouping heuristics [Brosnan, Scott, Fox, & Pye, 2004], the failure to process inter-element relationships [Behrmann et al, 2006], and/or the failure to consider the entire visual context [Happé, 1996]. Several studies have argued that this focus on local features is specifically detrimental to face recognition processes [Boucher & Lewis, 1992;Davies, Bishop, Manstead, & Tantam, 1994;Hobson, Ouston, & Lee, 1988;Joseph & Tanaka, 2003;Klin et al, 2002;Lahaie et al, 2006]. This atypical sensitivity to local elements has been addressed in two theoretical frameworks.…”

“…For example, the perceptual ability to group the individual features of a face into a holistic shape is critical for identity and emotion expression recognition. Impaired face identity and emotion expression recognition are some of the most widely cited deficits in autism [Joseph & Tanaka, 2003;Klin, Jones, Schultz, Volkmar, & Cohen, 2002;Lahaie et al, 2006;Pellicano, Jeffery, Burr, & Rhodes, 2007], which may be directly related to atypical perceptual organization abilities.…”

Face and object processing in autism spectrum disorders

“…The few studies that have included nonface objects as control stimuli have found that affected individuals were unimpaired [Hauck et al, 1998;Teunisse and de Gelder, 2003] or showed superior object-processing performance [Blair et al, 2002;Boucher and Lewis, 1992]. The combination of impaired face and intact object processing has led to the proposal that individuals with ASD fail to use secondorder configural [Barton et al, 2004;Davies et al, 1994;Teunisse and de Gelder, 2003] or holistic [Deruelle et al, 2004;Joseph and Tanaka, 2003;Lopez et al, 2004;Serra et al, 2003;Teunisse and Degelder, 1994] information for face discrimination, but instead rely on feature processing [Davies et al, 1994;Deruelle et al, 2004;Lahaie et al, 2006;Langdell, 1978]. Additionally, the paired observations of impaired configural processing and intact or superior feature processing have been interpreted by some researchers [Davies et al, 1994;Deruelle et al, 2004] as supporting the weak central coherence theory of ASD, which claims that individuals with ASD have a general cognitive style of focussing on the parts of visual stimuli rather than the contextual whole [Happe and Frith, 2006;Frith, 1983, 1993].…”

Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…In other words, the theory emphasises the principle of locally-oriented processing in autism as enhanced perceptual functioning (with possibly intact global processing). Although there is evidence to support this theory in relation to face processing (Lahaie, Mottron, Arguin, Berthiaume, Jemel & Saumier, 2006), findings from more recent studies have challenged it by showing that individuals with autism failed to reconstruct familiar objects from pieces of information. This deficit was enhanced when the stimulus lacked salient local information, suggesting that participants could not help but rely on the local salient cues to identify the object (Nakano, Ota, Kato & Kitazawa, 2010).…”