Abstract
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is characterised by a severe and relatively selective deficit in face recognition, in the absence of neurological injury. Because public and professional awareness of DP is low, many adults and children are not identified for formal testing. This may partly result from the lack of appropriate screening tools that can be used by non-experts in either professional or personal settings. To address this issue, the current study sought to (a) explore when DP can first be detected in oneself and another, and (b) identify a list of the condition’s everyday behavioural manifestations. Questionnaires and interviews were administered to large samples of adult DPs, their unaffected significant others, and parents of children with the condition; and data were analysed using inductive content analysis. It was found that DPs have limited insight into their difficulties, with most only achieving realisation in adulthood. Nevertheless, the DPs’ reflections on their childhood experiences, together with the parental responses, revealed specific indicators that can potentially be used to spot the condition in early childhood. These everyday hallmark symptoms may aid the detection of individuals who would benefit from objective testing, in oneself (in adults) or another person (for both adults and children).
Highlights
In the last 20 years, individuals with Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) have been used to make theoretical inferences about the development and functioning of the cognitive and neural architecture of the typical and impaired face recognition system
Participant responses to questions across both the questionnaires and interviews described a variety of different experiences of living with DP and ways in which the condition might be detected in oneself and others
Occurrences of categories and definitions of these categories are described in more detail below
Summary
In the last 20 years, individuals with DP have been used to make theoretical inferences about the development and functioning of the cognitive and neural architecture of the typical and impaired face recognition system (e.g. refs[10,11,12,13,14]). Much work examining the typical population indicates that people have limited insight into their own abilities (e.g. ref.35) and into their face recognition skills, reporting only weak-to-moderate correlations between subjective ratings and scores on objective tests (e.g. refs[36,37,38]). Unlike those with acquired prosopagnosia, those with DP have no point of comparison nor experience an abrupt loss of their face recognition skills: many individuals tested in our laboratory did not become aware of their difficulties until mid or even late adulthood (see [33,34]). This means that children with DP are not receiving suitable support, and in some cases, will use resources which may be better spent elsewhere
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