2024/11/23 by Sarah Bate, Emma Portch, Rachel J. Bennetts +1 · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Face Recognition and Perception #Child and Animal Learning Development #Language and cultural evolution
paper · doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2024.10.021
openalex publication_date 2024/11/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
Poor performance on cognitive assessment tasks may indicate a selective 'impairment'. However, it is unclear whether such difficulties separate the individual from the general population qualitatively (i.e., they form a discrete group) or quantitatively (i.e., they represent the lower end of a continuous distribution). Taxometric methods address this question but have rarely been applied to cognitive disorders. This study examined the latent structure of developmental prosopagnosia (DP) - a relatively selective deficit in face recognition that occurs in the absence of neurological injury. Multiple taxometric procedures were applied to dominant diagnostic indices of face recognition ability across two independent datasets. All analyses supported a categorical outcome, even for mild cases of DP, suggesting that it is a qualitatively distinct condition. This finding has significant implications for our understanding of DP given it has traditionally been viewed as a continuous impairment. In particular, existing (arbitrary) diagnostic cut-offs may be too conservative, underestimating prevalence rates and prohibiting big-data approaches to theoretical study. More broadly, these conclusions support application of the taxometric method to many other cognitive processes where weaknesses are predominantly assumed to reside on a continuous distribution.