Feature-based processing of personally familiar faces in prosopagnosia: evidence from eye-gaze contingency.

Abstract

How familiar and unfamiliar faces are perceived remains largely unknown. Two views have dominated this field of research. On the one hand, recordings of eye fixations on faces [10] and response classification experiments [2] suggest that a face is processed in terms of its individual components, or facial features (mouth, eyes, nose, . . . ), a strategy called analytical processing. On the other hand, there is strong behavioral evidence for interdependence in the processing of different features of a face [6,7], rather supporting holistic processing of the face [7]. According to the latter holistic view, facial features are simultaneously perceived and integrated into a single representation, so that the perceptual field is that of the whole face. To shed light on this issue, in two recent studies, we recorded eye movements in a neurological patient [5] suffering from a selective impairment in face recognition (acquired prosopagnosia). Previously, we showed that (1) PS fixates exactly on each of the main features of the face (mouth, left eye, right eye), contrary to normal observers who fixate mainly centrally on the top of the nose, around the geometric centre of the face [3]