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Gaze behaviour in hereditary prosopagnosia

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Abstract

Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize someone by the face alone in the absence of sensory or intellectual impairment. In contrast to the acquired form of prosopagnosia we studied the congenital form. Since we could recently show that this form is inherited as a simple monogenic trait we called it hereditary form. To determine whether not only face recognition and neuronal processing but also the perceptual acquisition of facial information is specific to prosopagnosia, we studied the gaze behaviour of four hereditary prosopagnosics in comparison to matched control subjects. This rarely studied form of prosopagnosia ensures that deficits are limited to face recognition. Whereas the control participants focused their gaze on the central facial features, the hereditary prosopagnosics showed a significantly different gaze behaviour. They had a more dispersed gaze and also fixated external facial features. Thus, the face recognition impairment of the hereditary prosopagnosics is reflected in their gaze behaviour.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10F, 35394, Giessen, Germany

    Gudrun Schwarzer, Susanne Huber, Cornelia Groß & Melanie Hipfel

  2. Institut für Humangenetik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany

    Martina Grüter, Thomas Grüter & Ingo Kennerknecht

Authors
  1. Gudrun Schwarzer
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  2. Susanne Huber
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  3. Martina Grüter
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  4. Thomas Grüter
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  5. Cornelia Groß
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  6. Melanie Hipfel
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  7. Ingo Kennerknecht
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gudrun Schwarzer.

Appendix

Appendix

Faces used in the famous face task

  • Boris Becker

  • Norbert Blüm

  • George Bush

  • Sabine Christiansen

  • Bill Clinton

  • Gerard Depardieu

  • Lady Diana

  • Albert Einstein

  • Joschka Fischer

  • Greta Garbo

  • Thomas Gottschalk

  • Günther Grass

  • Gregor Gysi

  • Günther Jauch

  • Helmut Kohl

  • Oskar Lafontaine

  • Elvis Pressly

  • Claudia Roth

  • Gerhard Schröder

  • Ralf Schumacher

  • Jürgen Trittin

  • Theodor Waigel

  • Richard von Weizäcker

  • Ulrich Wickert

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Schwarzer, G., Huber, S., Grüter, M. et al. Gaze behaviour in hereditary prosopagnosia. Psychological Research 71, 583–590 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0068-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0068-0

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