Autistic adults have insight into their relative face recognition ability

Gehdu, B. K., Press, C., Gray, K. L.H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6071-4588 and Cook, R. (2024) Autistic adults have insight into their relative face recognition ability. Scientific Reports, 14. 17802. ISSN 2045-2322 doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-67649-8

Abstract/Summary

The PI20 is a self-report questionnaire that assesses the presence of lifelong face recognition difficulties. The items on this scale ask respondents to assess their face recognition ability relative to the rest of the population, either explicitly or implicitly. Recent reports suggest that the PI20 scores of autistic participants exhibit little or no correlation with their performance on the Cambridge Face Memory Test – a key measure of face recognition ability. These reports are suggestive of a meta-cognitive deficit whereby autistic individuals are unable to infer whether their face recognition is impaired relative to the wider population. In the present study, however, we observed significant correlations between the PI20 scores of 77 autistic adults and their performance on two variants of the Cambridge Face Memory Test. These findings indicate that autistic individuals can infer whether their face recognition ability is impaired. Consistent with previous research, we observed a wide spread of face recognition abilities within our autistic sample. While some individuals approached ceiling levels of performance, others met the prevailing diagnostic criteria for developmental prosopagnosia. This variability showed little or no association with non-verbal intelligence, autism severity, or the presence of co-occurring alexithymia or ADHD.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/117343
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41598-024-67649-8
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Psychology Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Psychopathology and Affective Neuroscience Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Perception and Action
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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