Prosopagnosia as an impairment to face-specific mechanisms: Elimination of the alternative hypotheses in a developmental case

Abstract

For more than 35 years, researchers have debated whether face recognition is carried out by face-specific mechanisms or whether it involves more general mechanisms that are also used for objects. Prosopagnosic patients have furnished powerful evidence for face-specific mechanisms. Yet for each case that has been tested there have always been several untested alternative explanations that could account for the case. As such, each of these individuals has not been sufficiently tested to provide conclusive evidence for face-specific processes. Here we make a stronger argument with a single case of severe developmental prosopagnosia by exhaustively addressing all extant alternatives. We reject each in turn and thus eliminate all alternative accounts. Because this case is developmental in etiology the results also indicate that face recognition involves developmental mechanisms different from those producing other visual recognition mechanisms.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from NIH (F 32 MH64246–03 and R01 EY13602). Some of the images were provided courtesy of Mike Tarr (Brown University, Providence, RI). Special thanks to Anne Grossetete, Gayle Speck, Kerry Dingle, and Nancy Kanwisher for their contribution to this project.