REQUIRED READING
**Starred articles can be downloaded as a PDF
file from the university's e-journal collection. This is especially reommended
if you have a color printer, as all 3 articles contain color images. Go
to: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/psych/journals.html
1. DeHaan, E. H. F. (2001). Face perception and recognition. In In B. Rapp (Ed.), The Handbook of Cognitive Neuropsychology: What Deficits Reveal About the Human Mind, Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
2. ** Gauthier, I., Behrmann, M., & Tarr, M. J. (1999). Can face recognition really be dissociated from object recognition? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 11(4), 349-370.
3.** Ishai, A., Ungerleider, L. G., Martyin, A., Scouten, J. L., & Haxby, J. V. (1999). Distributed representation of objects in the human ventral visual pathway. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 96, 9379-9384. (Also downloadable from: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.cgi?artid=2599&pictype=5)
4.** Nakamura, K., Kawahima, R. and others. (2000). Functional delineation of the human occipito-temporal areas related to face and scene processing: A PET study. Brain, 123, 1903-1912
QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING:
1. Describe how each of the empirical papers above (#2-4) would view the claim that there is a neurocognitive "module" that is specific for perceiving faces. Be sure to discuss the evidence that each paper has for its claim.
2. Hypothetical patient RK is a world renowned architect who is well-known not only for the 200+ structures he has built all over the world, but also for his books on the works of California architect, Julia Morgan, and "Prairie School" architect, John Van Bergen. RK recently suffered a stroke that has left him prosopagnosic, and unable to reliably recognize either familiar or unfamiliar faces in a 2-alternative forced choice test. Would his ability to recognize buildings also be affected? If so, do you think that recognition of familiar and unfamiliar buildings would be affected differently? Would it depend on the location of the lesion? Explain your position using the theory and data presented in the papers above.
USEFUL LINKS
An overview of the types of tests used to assess prosopagnosia:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/~duchaine/devprosopagnosia.html
An on-line book about the experiences of a person with developmental (genetic) prosopagnosia (mentioned in the Gauthier article):
http://www.choisser.com/faceblind/
Visit the home of the Greebles:
http://www.cog.brown.edu/~tarr/tarrlab-projects.html
ADDITIONAL READINGS IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE:
1. Farah MJ, Wilson KD, Drain M, Tanaka JN. (1998). What is "special" about face perception? Psychology Review, 105(3), 482-98.
2. Duchaine, B.C. (2000). Developmental prosopagnosia with normal configural processing. Neuroreport, 11(1), 79-83.
3. Dixon, M. J. (1998). Semantic and visual determinants of face recognition in a prosopagnosic patient. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(3), 362-376.
4. Parr, L. A., Dove, T., & Hopkins, W. D. (1998). Why faces may be special: Evidence of the inversion effect in chimpanzees. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10(5), 615-622.
5. Dailey, M. N., & Cottrell, G. W. (1999). Prosopagnosia in modular neural network models. Progress in Brain Research, 121, 165-184..
6. De Renzi, E., & Di Pellegrino, G. (1998). Prosopagnosia and alexia without object agnosia. Cortex, 34, 403-415.