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Pareidolic Faces

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Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders

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Synonyms

ASD; Asperger’s; Mind reading; Face blindness; Prosopagnosia

Definition

Pareidolia is the overinterpretation of stimuli in the external world to impose patterns where none exist. This can apply to any sensory modality but is most commonly applied to visual stimuli. Within this realm, the term is often used to refer to the common human tendency to see faces where no faces are present. Familiar instances would include faces in the clouds, images of saviors in burnt toast, and the Man in the Moon (Liu et al. 2014).

Faces are perhaps the most socially significant visual stimuli encountered in the human environment (Palermo and Rhodes 2007). Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by deficits in response to social stimuli (APA 2013). Thus, it has been hypothesized that those with ASD may be less susceptible to this illusion should neurotypical humans. Furthermore, it has been suggested that this feature may be used as a diagnostic tool to identify ASD at a relatively early...

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References and Reading

  • American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

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  • Guillon, Q., Rogé, B., Afzali, M. H., Baduel, S., Kruck, J., & Hadjikhani, N. (2016). Intact perception but abnormal orientation towards face-like objects in young children with ASD. Scientific Reports, 6, 22119, 1–9.

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  • Kikuchi, Y., Senju, A., Tojo, Y., Osanai, H., & Hasegawa, T. (2009). Faces do not capture special attention in children with autism spectrum disorder: A change blindness study. Child Development, 80(5), 1421–1433.

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  • Liu, J., Li, J., Feng, L., Li, L., Tian, J., & Lee, K. (2014). Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia. Cortex, 53, 60–77.

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  • Palermo, R., & Rhodes, G. (2007). Are you always on my mind? A review of how face perception and attention interact. Neuropsychologia, 45, 75–92.

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  • Ryan, C., Stafford, M., & King, R. J. (2016). Brief report: Seeing the man in the moon: Do children with autism perceive Pareidolic faces? A pilot study. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(12), 3838–3843.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Applied Psychology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Robert King

Authors
  1. Robert King
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Correspondence to Robert King .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Fred R. Volkmar

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King, R. (2018). Pareidolic Faces. In: Volkmar, F. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102207-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6435-8_102207-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6435-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-6435-8

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