Social Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Face Tuning

Abstract

Many neurological, neurodevelopmental, neuropsychiatric, and psychosomatic disorders are characterized by impairments in visual social cognition, body language reading, and facial assessment of a social counterpart. Yet a wealth of research indicates that individuals with Williams syndrome exhibit remarkable concern for social stimuli and face fascination. Here individuals with Williams syndrome were presented with a set of Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). The primary advantage of these images is that single components do not explicitly trigger face-specific processing, whereas in face images commonly used for investigating face perception (such as photographs or depictions), the mere occurrence of typical cues already implicates face presence. In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Strikingly, individuals with Williams syndrome exhibited profound deficits in recognition of the Face-n-Food images as a face: they did not report seeing a face on the images, which typically developing controls effortlessly recognized as a face, and gave overall fewer face responses. This suggests atypical face tuning in Williams syndrome. The outcome is discussed in the light of a general pattern of social cognition in Williams syndrome and brain mechanisms underpinning face processing.

Social Cognition in Down Syndrome: Face Tuning in Face-Like Non-Face Images

“…It remains unclear whether individuals with DS experience shortage in face tuning. Recently, a new experimental tool had been proposed for studying face tuning (Pavlova et al, 2015, 2016a,b, 2017b, 2018): a set of food-plate images composed of food ingredients (fruits, vegetables, sausages; see Figures 1, 2) was created in a manner slightly bordering on the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593), an Italian painter best known for fascinating (very often grotesque and allegoric) imaginative portraits composed entirely of fruits, vegetables, plants, and flowers. The primary advantage of Face-n-Food images is that single components (food ingredients) do not explicitly trigger face processing.…”

Even subtle cultural differences affect face tuning

“…Once seen as a face, Arcimboldo-like paintings are often perceived with a face-dominating bias [ 36 ]. However, from time to time both typically developing individuals and patients give non-face responses on subsequent Face-n-Food images [ 31 , 33 , 34 ]. As some perceivers of the present study as well as participants of our earlier study [ 31 ] did not report seeing a face on all subsequent images after the first face response, we performed additional analyses on percentage of images recognized as a face.…”

“…or as a Gestalt. Once seen as a face, the Face-n-Food images are processed with a strong face-dominating bias [ 33 , 34 ] and, therefore, top-down influences may affect bottom-up processing of these images. In line with this, recent findings indicate that original Arcimboldo ‘hidden-face’ portraits are judged as being more ambiguous by perceivers with local than with holistic perceptual style [ 36 , 37 ].…”

“…Eye-tracking in Westerners shows that with Arcimboldo portraits (similarly with other faces), perceivers tend to fixate more the upper (‘eyes’) part of upright paintings, whereas the lower part (‘mouth’) corresponding to the position of eyes in upright stimuli is fixated with inverted orientation [ 40 ]. Pronounced difficulties in seeing faces on the Face-n-Food task are reported in individuals with Williams-Beuren syndrome (examined in the French speaking part of Switzerland and France) [ 33 ] and individuals with autistic spectrum disorders (tested in the North Italy) [ 34 ]: this scarcity may be accounted for, at least, partly, by deficits in visual feature integration. Yet, patient SL with visual simultanagnosia (that is characterized by focusing on visual analysis of local elements along with difficulties in perceiving wholes) perceives Arcimboldo paintings as faces without any troubles [ 41 ].…”

“…or as a face ( Fig 2 ). The foremost benefit of these images is that single components do not explicitly trigger face-specific processing, whereas in face images commonly used for investigating face perception (such as photographs), the mere occurrence of typical features or cues (such as a nose or mouth) already implicates face presence [ 33 – 34 ]. This task also profits from using unfamiliar images that is of special value in clinical settings and cross-cultural studies [ 35 ].…”