Recognition of faces: an approach to the study of autism
Abstract
SUMMARY Two age groups of normal, autistic and subnormal children were tested for their ability to recognize the faces of peers from isolated facial features and inverted photographs. The normal and subnormal subjects found the upper regions of the face most helpful for identification, whereas the younger autistic children found the lower features more helpful. The older autistic children showed no specific reliance on any one area, but were found to have error scores as low as those of the younger autistic children on the recognition of lower parts and error scores as low as the; controls on recognizing upper portions. The results are discussed and are found to favour a hypothesis in which the autistic child's familiarity with the mouth and/or eye areas is related to a cognitive deficit which affects the processing of both verbal and non‐verbal interpersonal communication.
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In structured viewing tasks, people with autism may rely less on eye information and sometimes more on mouth information.
“In general, however, this literature is consistent with Langdell’s 14 original hypothesis: individuals with autism show attenuated reliance on information from the eyes region of the face and, at least in some situations, over-reliance on information from the mouth region of the face when performing structured viewing tasks (e.g., recognition of face identity or emotional expressions).”
From Parsing Heterogeneity in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Visual Scanning of Dynamic Social Scenes in School-Aged Children (2012) · cites this paper as [14]
Langdell's (1978) original suggestion that children with ASD are less affected by facial inversion has received only mixed support.
“Langdell's (1978) original suggestion that children with ASD are less affected by facial inversion has received only mixed support.”
From Vision in autism spectrum disorders (2009) · cites this paper as Langdell (1978)
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- Authors
- Langdell, T.
- Affiliations
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Langdell, Tim
- Venue
- Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 1978-07
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 255-268
- ISSN
- 0021-9630 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-7610
- OpenAlex
- W2102076610
- Cited by
- 478
- References
- 23
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 21 · 2014: 22 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 0.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- face recognition (cognition), autism spectrum disorder, facial features, cognitive impairment, interpersonal communication, subnormal children, age differences
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Age Factors, Autistic Disorder, Child, Cognition Disorders, Communication, Eye, Female, Form Perception, Humans, Male, Intellectual Disability, Mouth, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Peer Group, Social Perception
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