Support for the perceptual account stems largely from studies using nonsocial, visuo–spatial stimuli, demonstrating strengths in local (Mottron et al.,
2006) and sometimes weaknesses in global (Happé & Frith,
2006) processing in ASD (discussed in Behrmann et al.,
2006). These findings extend to differences in face perception, given that faces are typically processed with configural and/or holistic (i.e., global) strategies, in which the relationship between facial features and overall shape are integrated (Carey & Diamond,
1977; Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka,
1998). An established literature reports that typically developing (TD) individuals perform poorly when faces are experimentally inverted (Yin,
1969). Specifically, the rotation of a face from an upright to inverted orientation disrupts the “configural” or “global” processing of its facial features and overall shape. As such, TD individuals respond slower and perform more poorly when faces are inverted than when they are upright (Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch,
2002). Similarly, TD individuals have greater difficulty identifying the individual features of two faces when the top and bottom halves are aligned, rather than misaligned (Young, Hellawell, & Hay,
1987). The alignment of the top and bottom halves facilitates a global analysis of all features simultaneously, meaning that two face images containing identical top halves are perceived as different when their bottom halves belong to separate identities. The misalignment of the top and bottom halves, however, facilitates the parsing of individual features and the correct identification of identity (Rossion,
2013). Further, TD individuals are more accurate at identifying the features of an individual face when they are presented in the context of the entire face than when they are presented in isolation (Tanaka & Farah,
1993; Tanaka, Kay, Grinnell, Stansfield, & Szechter,
1998). The poorer performance across all of these manipulations is taken as evidence of the predominance of a global processing strategy in TD individuals.