Abstract
Congenital prosopagnosia (CP) is a neurodevelopment disorder characterized by life-long impairments in face processing in the absence of an overt lesion or a neurological disease. Surprisingly, most research in this domain is conducted on adults and little is known about its manifestation in children. The purpose of our study is to investigate the normal and abnormal developmental trajectory of face perception in a large cohort of children using different measures that were adapted from those used in research on CP in adults. Seven different measures were included in the battery: 1. A famous face questionnaire was used to investigate long term memory 2. The Children CFMT test was used to determine short term memory for faces 3. Shoes recognition test was used to examine object recognition. 4. A hierarchical shape test was used to examine deficits in global processing 5. An upright-inverted test was used to examine the face inversion effect. 6+7: ASSQ questionnaire and a face expressions test were used to exclude cases of children with ASD. Data collected so far from 44 children in ages 6-14 in the normal population reveal the presence of an inversion face effect and global precedence for shape processing across all ages. Additionally, quantitative performance differences were found along ages in face and shoe short term memory tests. The current results support a quantitative rather than qualitative trajectory of face and shape processing maturation in the normal population. The collected data will contribute to the development of a valid and firm diagnostic tool for abnormal face perception in children and to the understanding of the developmental changes that underlie CP in children.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2015