Normal social cognition in developmental prosopagnosia

Abstract

Face perception provides information critical to cognitive computations about the social world. This raises the possibility that the development of mechanisms used for social cognition may depend on the presence of normal face perception mechanisms, and this notion partly motivates an aetiological model of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that suggests that deficits in face perception lead to the social cognition impairments that characterize ASD. To investigate these issues, we examined social cognition in participants with developmental prosopagnosia (DP). A total of 2 male DPs with severe facial identity and facial expression deficits showed no signs of impaired social cognition on three measures. A total of 10 other DPs responded to an inventory measuring autistic traits, and all except one performed normally. These results indicate that social cognition mechanisms can develop normally in the context of developmental face-processing impairments.

Keywords:

• Social perception
• Autism
• Neuropsychology
• Face perception
• Emotion recognition

Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate the generosity of our participants with prosopagnosia. This work was supported by an ESRC First Grants Scheme to B.D. (RES–061–23–0040).