Davies-Thompson, Jodie, Morgan, Daniel, Davis, Josh P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0017-7159 and Towler, John R. (2024) Face feature change detection ability in developmental prosopagnosia and super-recognisers. Brain Sciences, 14 (6):561. ISSN 2076-3425 (Online) (doi:10.3390/brainsci14060561)

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Abstract

In non-clinical populations, facial features (eyes, nose, mouth) may vary in their contribution to face identity perception. Changes to whole faces are easier to detect than changes to individual features, and eye changes are typically easier to detect than mouth changes, which in turn are easier to detect than nose changes. However, how this differs for people with face recognition difficulties (developmental prosopagnosia; DP) and for individuals with superior face recognition abilities (super-recognisers; SR) is not clear; although findings from previous studies have suggested differences, the nature of this difference is not understood. The aim of this study was to examine whether differences in the ability to detect feature changes in DPs and SRs were (a) quantitative, meaning that the pattern across feature changes remained the same but there was an overall upwards or downwards shift in performance, or (b) qualitative, meaning that the pattern across feature changes was different. Using a change detection task in which individual face features (eyes, nose, mouth) changed between sequentially presented faces, we found that while prosopagnosics showed a quantitative difference in performance with a downwards shift across all conditions, super-recognisers only showed qualitative differences: they were better able to detect when the face was the same and were marginally (but not non-significantly) worse at detecting when the eyes changed. Further, the only condition which distinguished between the three groups was the ability to identify when the same face was presented, with SRs being better than controls, and controls being better than DPs. Our findings suggest that, in feature-matching tasks, differences for DPs are due to them being overall worse at the task, while SRs use a qualitatively different strategy.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article belongs to the Special Issue Insights into Developmental Prosopagnosia.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	face recognition, face features, super-recognisers, prosopagnosia
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > Institute for Lifecourse Development > Centre for Thinking and Learning Faculty of Education, Health & Human Sciences > School of Human Sciences (HUM)
Last Modified:	09 Jan 2026 16:06
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/52118

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