The Development of Categorization and Facial Knowledge: Implications for the Study of Autism

Abstract

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder with onset before the age of three years. Recent studies suggest that its prevalence in the United States is as high as 1 out of every 150 children (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007), and there is concern that the incidence of autism is rising worldwide (Chakrabarti & Fombonne, 2005). There has been a tremendous amount of research on autism, especially in recent years. However, the theories which attempt to explain autism have failed to address how autism might develop before the diagnosis occurs (i.e., the development of autism during infancy). In addition, there is little theoretical explanation of the development of the diagnostic symptoms of autism. Despite the lack of scientific insight into the early development of autism, there is a growing body of evidence that symptoms of autism are present before the first birthday. The intervention literature has suggested that early intervention is most effective at altering the course of the disorder. Thus, there is a pressing need to diagnosis autism before age two. Research findings from our lab indicate a number of cognitive deficits in individuals with autism that are developing during infancy for typically developing individuals (e.g., gender categorization of faces). We, along with several other labs across the country, are beginning to investigate

Asymmetries in infants’ attention toward and categorization of male faces: The potential role of experience

“…Their lesser experience with unfamiliar face types (e.g., unfamiliar races, male-like faces) renders those faces as less typical and, therefore, more difficult to categorize (Anzures et al, 2010; Ramsey et al, 2005). Although some data suggest that older infants can categorize male faces (Leinbach & Fagot, 1993; Newell, Best, Gastgeb, Rump, & Strauss, 2011), neither of the studies controlled for infants’ spontaneous preference for female faces (Quinn et al, 2002), making the results ambiguous. Results from intermodal matching studies suggest 9- to 12-month-olds have a better developed category for female than male faces (Poulin-Dubois et al., 1994), which fits with the notion that infants’ social categorization abilities become specialized toward the end of the first year and reflect who is most socially relevant to the infant.…”

“…Currently, it is unclear whether infants categorize the faces of low masculine (“gender atypical”) males as male or female (see Newell et al, 2011), but given the time lag between when infants’ visual preferences for females first manifest before generalizing to low masculine males, it seems unlikely that infants perceive low masculine males as female. Assessing whether infants look more toward a low masculine relative to high masculine male when hearing a female voice during an intermodal matching task is one way to potentially examine such categorization.…”

Can Individuals with Autism Abstract Prototypes of Natural Faces?

“…It is well-known that individuals with autism have difficulties perceiving and recognizing faces, including deficits in the categorization of facial gender (e.g., Behrmann et al, 2006; Best, Minshew, & Strauss, 2010), discrimination of facial expressions, (e.g., Celani, Battacchi, & Arcidiacono, 1999; Rump, Giovannelli, Minshew, & Strauss, 2009), and face recognition (e.g., Klin, Sparrow, de Bildt, Cicchetti, Cohen, & Volkmar, 1999; Lahaie, Mottron, Arguin, Berthiaume, Jemel, & Saumier, 2006; Newell, Best, Gastgeb, Rump, & Strauss, 2010). Traditional explanations for these deficits have suggested that individuals with autism focus more on discrete facial features rather than processing configural information and perceiving faces in a holistic manner (for review see Dawson, Webb, & McPartland, 2005).…”

A cognitive architecture account of the visual local advantage phenomenon in autism spectrum disorders

“…That categorization in ASD is indeed atypical is sustained by studies that focused on categorization tasks in which the to-be-categorized exemplars showed deviations from prototypes (Klinger & Dawson, 2001; see also Church et al, 2010;Gastgeb et al, 2009;Johnson & Rakison, 2006;Molesworth, Bowler, & Hampton, 2008;Plaisted, 2000). Such categorization tasks require the formation of prototypes, and according to Newell et al (2010), these findings indeed suggest that, unlike typical exemplars, atypical exemplars are processed more like members of a (relatively small) subordinate category than as members of a (relatively large) basic level category.…”