Face learning strategies in typical observers and in developmental prosopagnosia

peer reviewed ; People with developmental prosopagnosia (DPs) show deficits in face recognition tasks and report using non-facial/peripheral cues (e.g. hairstyle) to compensate in their day-to-day lives. However, most experimental tasks use non-ecological stimuli (e.g. hair is removed), maybe inflating their observed difficulties. Recent studies highlight the importance of peripheral features for typical observers too. We thus compared recognition performance of 30 DPs and 35 controls after they studied three identities from videos. Test images showed target identities (and foils) with an appearance similar (i.e., consistent hairstyle, makeup) or dissimilar to learning. Further, images either only showed inner facial features or included peripheral features to assess their contribution. Although DPs made more errors overall than controls, error patterns were strikingly similar in both groups. Targets were missed more often when peripheral features were concealed or had changed, and false alarms were more frequent with similar looking foils. Face learning strategies of DPs and typical observers are thus comparable, which suggests that DPs represent the tail end of face recognition abilities rather than displaying qualitatively different abilities.