The Nature Of Face Processing Impairments

Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness, is a neuropsychological condition that refers to impairment in the recognition of faces. Although prosopagnosic patients suffer from other types of recognition impairments (place recognition, car recognition, facial expression of emotion, est.), they experience face recognition problems above or over other types impairments. Prosopagnosia occurs without intellectual, sensory or cognitive impairments; in other words, people with prosopagnosia can still recognize people from non-facial cues. They cannot recognize familiar people by their faces alone, and often use alternative routes to alleviate the effects of this impairment. These routes include

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be a disorder in the brain, caused by genetic, environmental or neural levels. Autism effects data processing in the brain by alerting how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs not understand. (Johnson.2004)

Park, H. R., Lee, J. M., Moon, H. E., Lee, D. S., Kim, B.-N., Kim, J., … Paek, S. H. (2016). A Short Review on the Current Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Experimental Neurobiology, 25(1), 1–13. http://doi.org/10.5607/en.2016.25.1.1

There are several different types of psychological and neurological phenomena that individuals live with every day. One of most interesting conditions that many individuals might not be aware of is prosopagnosia or face blindness. Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize and distinguish faces. For example, individuals with this condition could have difficulty recognizing their child’s, spouse’s, parent’s, or friend’s face. Many individuals with prosopagnosia will rely on other features to distinguish between other people, such as hair style or color, voices, or posture. As discussed in Chapter 3, prosopagnosia is thought to affect the Fusiform Face Area.

Szatmari P, Bartolucci G, Bremner R, Bond S, Rich S. A follow-up study of high-functioning autistic children. J Autism Dev Disord. 1989;19:213–25

Neurological disorders are complex in nature and often the least understood. Given the recent boom in imaging technology and other diagnostic methods, it is now possible to see more clearly into the scope of neurological development and accurately determine the etiology of these diseases. One of such disorders is Autism; a multifactorial condition impairing normal brain development. It affects many aspects of development, including social behavior, cognitive ability and communication skills1 and is commonly diagnosed in children before the age of three1. The symptoms of this condition can vary greatly between individuals; hence its classification as a spectrum disorder. Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome and pervasive

Some common effects of autism include mishaps of cognitive disorders as well as seizures and other slow development of the brain. The symptoms of seizure are disorders are quite varied. They can range from brief episodes where the child seems to “tune out” to much more obvious convulsions where the child falls to the ground, loses consciousness, and has alternating periods of muscle contraction and relaxation (Volkmar and Wiesner 28). A number of other neurological problems are observed in autism. Some children with autism have delays in the development of hand dominance later than typically developing children (Volkmar and Wiesner 28). Not every child has every problem.

autism triad of impairments range, but differ from those with autistic disorder in a few very crucial

When considering the development of someone with autism, a common issue is the social stimuli associated with language development. Often the social effects of having autism affect other areas of development as well. Researchers have related the increased viewing of stimuli to skin conductance responses, and their association with language development in autism. A study was conducted on 32 children with ASD; this set of children was divided into two groups based on their language histories, and how they acquired their onset of symptoms. A typically developing set of children was matched with the group of 32. Skin conductance responses

Rhodes. G, L. Ewing, L. Jeffery, E.Avard, L.Taylor. 2014. Reduced adaptability, but no fundamental disruption, of norm-based face-coding mechanisms in cognitively able children and adolescents with autism. (n.d.).Neuropsychologia, 63, 262-268.

From the results of the study, the investigators found that the participants with ASD showed lower correct response rates for recognizing affect via emotional words and facial emoticons. They also found that the part of the brain, called the fusiform gyrus, in the participants with ASD had a greater activation rate during emotional word tasks when compared to their typically developing peers. Interestingly, the investigators found that the fusiform gyrus of the participants with ASD had less of an activation response to facial emoticons when compared to their typically developing peers (Han et al., 2014).

Over the past decade, the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has increased at a rapid rate (MacFarlane & Kanaya, 2009). “Autism spectrum disorder is defined as a heterogeneous, behaviorally identifiable neurodevelopment disorder that occurs in 1 in 150 children (Press & Richman, 2013).” During the infancy and toddlerhood stage, a baby showing signs of ASD will typically have an absence of normal brain development, which can hinder their physical development specifically their perceptual development of vision (Berk, 2014). For example, a baby with normal brain development will begin to make eye contact with their caregiver at approximately 8 weeks of age during daily feedings; in comparison a baby showing signs of abnormal brain development will struggle with making directly eye contact with their caregiver during the same daily feedings (MacFarlane & Kanaya, 2009). Jake, a 3-year-old boy was diagnosed with ASD at 18 months of age. Jake has been struggling with making direct eye contact with others since his early infancy and toddlerhood and it has continued throughout his early childhood (Carbone, O’Brien, Sweeney-Kerwin, & Albert, 2013). “A substantial number of children with autism fail to develop this important skill and therefore experimenters with both develop- mental and behavior

Overly, the model provides coherent explanation of many kind of information about faces and how they relate to each other. It provides evidence about significant differences in processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Nonetheless there are limitations. For instance, there is not enough information about processing unfamiliar faces. Burton et al. (1999)

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (IASD) are one group of people thought to ‘see the world differently.’ Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder diagnosed when behavior is characterized by persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction, in addition to restricted, and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests (RRBIs; DSM-V, American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Although it is not currently included in the diagnostic criteria, atypical visual processing has also been indicated as part of the ASD phenotype (Brundson & Happe, 2014). A large number of studies have investigated local and global processing in ASD; however, the literature is marked with inconsistent findings.While it is generally agreed upon that global-local processing is atypical in ASD, the precise

The autism spectral disorders are defined by the qualitative impairments in social communication. Although the actual reason for autism is still unknown to the medical sciences; it has been proved to be the result of abnormal and irregular growth of cerebral neurons of human brains. People suffering from autism very often demonstrate a poor performance in social interactions; and hence find it difficult to communicate to other people. On the other hand, it is equally difficult for others to communicate to them in the usual ways.