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Atypical development of configural face recognition in children with autism, D own syndrome and W illiams syndrome
Author(s) -
Dimitriou D.,
Leonard H. C.,
KarmiloffSmith A.,
Johnson M. H.,
Thomas M. S. C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of intellectual disability research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1365-2788
pISSN - 0964-2633
DOI - 10.1111/jir.12141
Subject(s) - psychology , mental age , autism , williams syndrome , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , developmental disorder , task (project management) , face (sociological concept) , facial recognition system , cognition , neuroscience , pattern recognition (psychology) , management , economics , social science , sociology
Background Configural processing in face recognition is a sensitivity to the spacing between facial features. It has been argued both that its presence represents a high level of expertise in face recognition, and also that it is a developmentally vulnerable process. Method We report a cross‐syndrome investigation of the development of configural face recognition in school‐aged children with autism, D own syndrome and W illiams syndrome compared with a typically developing comparison group. Cross‐sectional trajectory analyses were used to compare configural and featural face recognition utilising the ‘ J ane faces’ task. Trajectories were constructed linking featural and configural performance either to chronological age or to different measures of mental age (receptive vocabulary, visuospatial construction), as well as the B enton face recognition task. Results An emergent inversion effect across age for detecting configural but not featural changes in faces was established as the marker of typical development. Children from clinical groups displayed atypical profiles that differed across all groups. Conclusion We discuss the implications for the nature of face processing within the respective developmental disorders, and how the cross‐sectional syndrome comparison informs the constraints that shape the typical development of face recognition.