Teaching Children with Autism to Recognize Faces

Teaching Children with Autism toRecognize Faces

Buyun Xu and James W. Tanaka

Introduction

For humans, the face contains a wealth of social information regarding the age,

gender, race, emotional state, and identity of a person. Given their immense social

importance, it is not so surprising that newborns only 30 min old show a preference

for faces over other non-face objects (Morton and Johnson 1991). However, solely

attending to faces in the environment is not enough. In everyday life, it is essential

that we identify faces at the level of the individual; that is, we should recognize that

it is John’s face, rather than simply a man’s face or a human face.

The individual level of recognition is especially important in social contexts. For

example, imagine you are having dinner in a restaurant and someone comes over

and says hello to you. You find the face to be highly familiar, but you can’t recall

who that person is. Hundreds of possibilities come to your mind during the

awkward handshake; “Could it be James, or Mike, or....” Failure to recognize

faces often ends up in embarrassment. Fortunately, this kind of situation does not

happen very often. Most people have the expertise to process faces automatically,

and can easily recognize the identity of a given face from thousands of other faces.

Although the deficit in face identity recognition is not a defining characteristic of

the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis (APA 2000), a large body of

evidence has demonstrated that individuals with ASD are selectively impaired in

their face processing abilities (e.g., Serra et al. 2003; Scherf et al. 2008; Wolf et al.

2008; Wilson et al. 2010a, b; Tanaka et al. 2010; McPartland et al. 2011; Tanaka

et al. 2012). On one hand, it is conceivable that the face processing difficulties

experienced by people with ASD play a contributing role to the core social and

communication deficits that characterize the autism condition (Dawson et al. 2005;

Schultz 2005). However, the reverse relationship is also plausible. Poor social and

B. Xu (*) • J.W. Tanaka

Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada

e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

V.B. Patel et al. (eds.), Comprehensive Guide to Autism,DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4788-7_56,# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

1043

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

communication skills and a general disinterest in people might lead to less moti-

vation to attend to faces, which leads to impaired face recognition and further

degrading of social skills. This circular relationship is depicted in Fig. 1 where

deficient face processing and impoverished social interaction are self-reinforcing.

Regardless of whether impaired face processing is a cause or an effect of autism, if

face recognition ability can be improved by interventions, then it is possible that the

social deficits of children with ASD can also be alleviated. Therefore, it is important

to know how and why the function of face recognition is impaired for children with

ASD, and if it is possible to improve the face recognition ability through training.

In this chapter, the ability of face recognition of children with ASD will be

reviewed and the sources of these deficits will be discussed. Two evidence-based

computerized intervention, the Face Expertise Training (Faja et al. 2012) and the

Let’s Face It! (LFI!) program (Tanaka et al. 2010), whose purpose is to improve the

facial identity recognition ability of children with ASD, will be presented. In

the last section of the chapter, future possibilities for the intervention with new

technologies will be explored.

Face Recognition Ability of Children with ASD

In order to use the facial information in social interactions, there are several

necessary sequential stages of processing, involving the attentional selection of

the face and the recognition of the facial identity. According to the face processing

Interventions

Face RecognitionDeficits

SocialDeficits

Fig. 1 The circular

relationship between social

deficits and face recognition

deficits. The relation between

face recognition deficits and

social deficits of children with

ASD, and how intervention

for face recognition works

1044 B. Xu and J.W. Tanaka

hierarchy (Tanaka et al. 2003) (Fig. 2), there are three domains of face processing

with unique functions involving the attention to faces (Domain 1), the recognition

of expression and identity (Domain 2), and the understanding of facial cues in

a social context (Domain 3).

Attention to Faces in the Environment

According to the face processing hierarchy, the first step in recognizing faces is

attending to faces in the environment. As salient objects in our environment,

research has shown that faces more readily capture our attention than other non-

face objects (Morton and Johnson 1991; Farroni et al. 2005) and once attended to,

are more efficiently processed by our visual system (Lewis and Edmonds 2003).

Whereas faces attract typically developed children, individuals with ASD do not

voluntarily orient to faces, and an infant’s inattention to faces is used as one of the

early signals of ASD (e.g., in the checklist by Robins et al. 2001). For example,

observations from home videos of a child’s first birthday showed that children who

were later diagnosed with ASD displayed less interest in other people’s faces than

typically developed children (Osterling and Dawson 1994; Swettenham et al. 1998;

Mars et al. 1998). Eye-tracking studies have also shown that childrenwithASD spend

more time looking at body parts or objects than looking at faces (Klin et al. 2002;

Speer et al. 2007). Using a change detection task, Kikuchi et al. (2009) found that

when detecting changes between two sequentially presented pictures, typically

Domain I

Domain III

Domain IIbDomain IIa

Attention to Faces

Facial Expression

Social Meaning ofFacial Cues

Facial Identity

Fig. 2 Hierarchical Face

Processing Model. The

necessary sequential stages of

face processing. From Tanaka

et al. (2003). Used by

permission from The

development of face

Processing by Schwarzer and

Leder, ISBN 978-0-88937-

264-1, p. 103 #2003 by

Hogrefe Publishing. www.

hogrefe.com

Teaching Children with Autism to Recognize Faces 1045

http://www.hogrefe.com

http://www.hogrefe.com

developed children were faster to detect changes that occurred in faces than non-face

objects. However, children with ASD show equal detection of changes in faces and

non-face objects, suggesting that faces confer no processing advantage over objects.

When children with ASD do look at a face, they tend to avoid the eye region and

look more at the mouth. The eye region is usually the optimum gaze landing point

for typically developed people when looking at faces and provides rich information

during social interaction. However, as one of the diagnostic criteria in DSM – IVTR

(APA 2002), children with ASD have impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal

behaviors, especially eye-to-eye gaze. Children with ASD look at the eye region

less often than typically developed children. This characteristic is reflected in

several eye-tracking studies (Pelphrey et al. 2002; Dalton et al. 2005; Neumann

et al. 2006; Speer et al. 2007; Boraston et al. 2008; Sterling et al. 2008 except in

Rutherford and Towns 2008); Dalton et al. (2005) combined eye tracking and brain

imaging and found that, compared with the typically developed population, people

with ASD showed negative emotional responses (both physiologically and neuro-

logically) to the eyes when they are demanded to process the eye region. These

findings indicate that people with ASD tend to avoid processing the eye region

when they are looking at faces.

Ability to Recognize Facial Identities

As shown in Fig. 2, the next stage in the face processing hierarchy is recognition,

where the attended face is matched to a stored representation in visual memory.

Face recognition involves a perceptual stage that allows a face to be recognized

across changes in viewpoint, lighting, clothing, etc., and a memory stage in which

a studied face is matched to the appropriate face memory.

Children with ASD have shown deficits in their face perception skills. The

Benton Fact Recognition Test (BFRT) is a perceptual task in which the child is

required to match an unfamiliar target face to corresponding test faces that might

differ in orientation or lighting. Studies using the BFRT showed that children with

ASD performed worse on this task than age and IQ-matched typically developed

children (Annaz et al. 2009; Wallace et al. 2008). These results indicate that on

a perceptual level, children with ASD have difficulty matching faces that belong to

the same identity but differ in terms of their visual appearance.

Children with ASD also struggle on face recognition tasks that require face

memorization. In the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT), for example, partic-

ipants study a series of target faces and at test, must select the correct target faces

amongst a number of foil faces. The study and test target faces are either (a)

identical images, (b) shown in different orientations, or (c) shown in different

orientations with noise (Fig. 3). Studies using the CFMT have also shown that

children with ASD do not perform as well as age and IQ-matched typically

developed children in recognizing faces (Kirchner et al. 2011; O’Hearn et al.

2010, but only with older age group). The delayed matching task also tests face

memory. In this task, participants are presented with a face and are then required to


recognize the face from a number of foil faces presented simultaneously afterwards.

Using this paradigm, researchers (Gepner 1996; Serra et al. 2003; Scherf et al.

2008; Wolf et al. 2008; Wilson et al. 2010a, b) found that children with ASD had

a lower performance than typically developed children. Other studies have shown

Fig. 3 Examples of stimuli from to CFMT. The CFMT tests the recognition of faces in different

conditions. These are not real stimulus from the test. From Duchaine and Nakayama (2006). With

permission from Neuropsychologia published by Elsevier


that children with autism have difficulty with their long-term memory for faces. In

the old-new recognition paradigm, participants study a series of faces and then after

a short break, they must identify the studied faces from unstudied faces. Researches

using this paradigm (de Gelder et al. 1991; Boucher and Lewis 1992; Boucher et al.

1998; Hauck et al. 1998; McPartland et al. 2011) found that children with ASD

performed worse than age and IQ-matched typically developed children. Critically,

children with ASD are comparable in their ability to recognize non-face objects as

typically developed children (Boucher and Lewis 1992; Gepner 1996; Boucher

et al. 1998; Hauck et al. 1998; Serra et al. 2003; Scherf et al. 2008; Wolf et al. 2008;

Wilson et al. 2010a, b). These findings indicate that the impairment is face-specific.

Face Processing Strategies

Whereas the foregoing evidence indicates that children with ASD exhibit impaired

face recognition, these experiments do not address the underlying cognitive pro-

cesses that might lead to compromised face recognition in ASD. It has been

proposed that special “holistic” processes are employed for recognizing faces that

are not used for the recognition of other types of objects (e.g., cars, chairs, birds).

Because all faces contain the same features of two eyes, one nose, and one mouth

that are arranged in roughly same spatial configuration (eyes are always above nose

and mouth is always below nose, etc.), face recognition cannot be based on the

identification of a single feature but must rely on the integration of individual

features and their spatial configuration in a whole face or “holistic” face memory.

However, as shown on a number of tests, children with ASD do not seem to have

a typical holistic face processing strategy. Holistic processing occurs when faces are

presented in their regular upright orientation but is attenuated when faces are presented

in their inverted orientation. A robust finding in the face recognition literature is that

inversion disproportionately impairs the recognition of facesmore than the recognition

of non-face objects, such as airplanes or stick figures (Yin 1969) – the so called Face

Inversion Effect. Several studies tested the face inversion effect on children with ASD

but showedmixed results. On one hand, some studies found a weakened face inversion

effect with children with ASD (Langdell 1978; Hobson et al. 1988; Tantam et al. 1989;

Joseph and Tanaka 2003; Rose et al. 2007) suggesting that children with ASD process

faces less holistically than typically developed children. In contrast, other studies found

children with ASD exhibited a robust face inversion effect indicating intact holistic

processes (Lahaie et al. 2006; Rose et al. 2007; Rutherford et al. 2007).

The part/whole task is a direct indicator of holistic face processing. In this task,

participants are shown a whole face and are then asked to identify a face part

(e.g., eyes) displayed in the original whole face or in isolation. The main finding is

that recognition is better when tested in the whole face than in isolation. Critically,

the whole face advantage disappears with the face is turned upside down or when

the features are scrambled (Tanaka and Farah 1993). According to the holistic

explanation, faces are encoded and stored as wholes, not as individual parts;

therefore, identification of a face part is a better fit with the underlying whole


face memory. In contrast, the facial features from inverted faces and scrambled

faces are remembered as individual parts and thus, show no whole face advantage.

Studies using the part/whole paradigm found that unlike typically developed

children, children with ASD showed a whole advantage only for the mouth region,

but not for the eye region (Joseph and Tanaka 2003; Wolf et al. 2008); Lopez et al.

(2004) found that children with ASD showed the whole advantage only when they

were cued to look at a certain face region. These results indicate that children with

ASD fail to use a holistic approach to face recognition, especially when processing

information in the eye region.

A third important measurement of holistic face processing is the face composite

effect. The face composite effect can be described as the enhanced difficulty in

recognizing the top half of a composite face (top half and bottom half of the face

belong to different individuals) when the inconsistent other half-face is spatially

aligned with the target half rather than misaligned (Young et al. 1987). The face

composite effect is driven by the holistic binding of the two face-halves to produce

a novel face. When two face-halves are misaligned, the holistic processing is

disrupted, thereby eliminating the composite effect. Studies using this paradigm

yield mixed results. Gauthier et al. (2009) reported a lack of composite effect in

adolescents with ASD. However, Nishimura et al. (2008) found that adult participants

with ASD exhibit the composite effect. The discrepancy of these two studies might

originate from the heterogeneity of autistic populations, ormethodological differences

between the two studies (see Gauthier et al. 2010 for further discussion on this issue).

Despite these mixed findings, an impaired or absent holistic processing strategy

might explain the face recognition deficits in ASD depicted in the many behavioral

studies mentioned previously.

Teaching Children with ASD to Recognize Faces

Since deficits in face recognition are related with impaired social interaction, it

would be valuable to develop intervention programs to improve the face recogni-

tion ability of children with ASD, which might indirectly improve their quality of

social interaction (see Fig. 1). In this section, we will focus on two computer-based

interventions: the Face Expertise Training project (Faja et al. 2008) and the LFI!program (Tanaka et al. 2010) for the following reasons. First, both studies used

a randomized clinical trial design, in which a homogeneous control group was used

to contrast the effects of the training. Second, both studies focused on the training of

the recognition of a relatively large number of unfamiliar faces, rather than familiar

faces (such as friends, teachers, parents). Thus, it is assumed that the training gains

reflect increased efficiency in general face processing strategies rather than the

improvement on a subset of particular, familiar faces.

The two training programs are based on the premise that children with ASD lack

the perceptual expertise for faces and that this skill can be improved through

systematic training. A behavioral indicator of perceptual expertise is the ability to

recognize objects at the subordinate level as quickly as basic level classification


(Tanaka and Taylor 1991). When an object is processed by the cognitive system,

human beings first classify the object into the basic level of classification, which is

the most inclusive level where a generalized shape of category exemplars is

identifiable and imaginable (e.g., bird, car, chair), then into a more subordinate

level of classification (e.g., sparrow). However, experts can make subordinate

levels of classification as fast as the basic level of classification. For example,

a bird expert can distinguish a robin from a sparrow (subordinate level) as quickly

as they can distinguish a bird from a dog (basic level). Previous studies have shown

that this type of perceptual expertise can be obtained in the laboratory with

intensive training within a short period of time. For example, participants can be

trained to make fine subordinate level discriminations between artificial objects

(Greebles) (Gauthier and Tarr 1997; Gauthier et al. 1998). After training, partici-

pants are able to make subordinate level classifications of Greebles as quickly as

they do at their basic level. Moreover, their recognition strategies seem to be more

holistic as measured by the composite task. Therefore, it is possible that children

with ASD can improve their perceptual expertise in face processing by training.

Face Expertise Training

Following this logic, Faja and colleagues developed the Face Expertise Trainingprogram. The hypothesis is that, like Greeble expertise, face expertise can be

obtained by training. The training basically consists of multiple sessions of category

learning and matching tasks. Participants familiarize themselves with several

category classifications of a target face, and in the matching task, they need to

put that face into the right category. There are three levels of categories to learn: the

general level category of gender (male, female), the intermediate level category of

age (old, young), and the specific level category of identity. Due to the impaired

verbal ability of children with ASD, unique color and patterns were used for

identity information rather than names (Fig. 4).

Participants were first instructed to emphasize configural processing of faces.

They were introduced with unfamiliar faces with their categories. Afterwards,

participants were required to do a series of categorizations and matching tasks by

selecting the appropriate labels for a certain face. For example, the face in Fig. 4 has

three levels of categorization. The general level category is gender (female), the

intermediate level category is age (young), and the specific level category is identity

(the wavy line pattern). Participants were familiarized with the face and the related

categorization information and were asked to choose the right category (e.g., if it is

female or male) when they saw the face. The face could be presented in normal

front-view presentation, cropped, pixilated, or in different views. Participants were

rewarded for each correct classification. If participants could do the matching task

for identity as fast as gender (Gauthier et al. 1998), and/or achieved an accuracy rate

above 85 %, then they were regarded as successfully trained in face expertise, and

would receive no more training. The whole training process takes less than 8 h.

A maximum of eight sessions (about 30–60 min each) take place within 3 weeks.


Faja et al. (2008) found that after a three-week training period, individuals in the

treatment group developed face expertise as reflected by their speeded classification at

the subordinate level of individual identity. Although the holistic processingmeasure-

ment did not show a significant improvement, the treatment group showed signifi-

cantly greater sensitivity to configural information in a face as measured by a same/

different task. In a subsequent study, Faja et al. (2012) examined the neural correlates

of expertise training using event-related potentials (ERP). They found that an early

attentional brain component (i.e., the P100 component) was modified for ASD adults

after training showing that face learning produces reliable changes in brain activity.

The Face Expertise Training project has been effective for the development of

face processing expertise of young adults with ASD. However, the training task

itself was based on extensive repetition of categorization and matching task and

therefore, the training regiment might not be suitable for young children. In

addition, the Face Expertise Training program was laboratory-based and required

the assistance of research trainers who worked with the participants in a one-on-one

setting. As discussed in the next section, the goal of the LFI! software is to providea systematic program in face training that is entertaining and engaging to the child

and presented in an accessible learning environment.

The Let’s Face It! Project

Similar to the Face Expertise Training project, the philosophy behind the LFI!program (Tanaka et al. 2010) is that face expertise is trainable. The LFI! programis based on the hierarchy of face processing involved in the attention to faces

Fig. 4 Examples of face training stimuli and labels. Instead of verbal names, patterns (such as

wavy lines in this example) were used to refer to identities of faces. From Faja et al. (2012). With

permission from journal of autism and developmental disorders published by Springer


(Domain 1), recognition of facial identity and emotion (Domain 2), and under-

standing faces in a social context (Domain 3) (Fig. 5). For example, in the Domain 1

game of Find a Face, the child’s attentional skills are strengthened by testing their

ability to spot faces hidden in a complex scene. The Domain 2 game, Face Maker,exercises holistic processing abilities by requiring the child to construct a face from

individual eyes, nose, and mouth parts. Another important Domain 2 skill is the

ability to recognize a person under different conditions (Wolf et al. 2008). In SearchParty, players select a target face that corresponds to the study face, but the faces

might differ in terms of their expressions, viewing perspective, or clothing. Two ofa Kind also taps in face memory by asking the player to match face cards with the

same identity or expression. Splash requires players to find the face with target

identity or expression among a number of faces fading in and out of the screen. ZapIt is an action game in which the player launches face tokens and connects tokens

that share the same identity or expressions. Domain 3 skills require the understand-

ing of facial cues in social context, such as interpreting other’s feeling and eye gaze

and attentional status. In Eye Spy, a central face is presented inside a circular array

of objects and the player’s objective is to click on the object that is the focus of the

person’s gaze.

Find a Face

Eye Spy

Zap It Two of a KindSplash

Face Maker Search Party

Fig. 5 Screenshots from the LFI! There are seven games in all, corresponding to the three

domains of the face processing hierarchy. From the LFI! games downloaded from http://web.

uvic.ca/�letsface/letsfaceit/. With permission from the Center for Autism Research, Technology

and Education (CARTE) in University of Victoria


http://web.uvic.ca/~letsface/letsfaceit/



The LFI! program is composed of seven games, each with its own music track

and scoring system. Higher level of difficulty usually involves masks (mouth mask,

sun glass, or hats) or changes (orientation, identity, or expression) or a larger set of

stimuli to choose from. Players need to achieve enough points to advance to the

next level. Computer-animated graphics and high-score tables are included to make

the training environment more challenging and engaging.

To test the effectiveness of the LFI! games, a randomized clinical trial was

carried out, in which children and adolescents in the intervention group played the

games for a total of 20 h (Tanaka et al. 2010). Prior to the intervention, participants

in the intervention and control group completed the LFI! battery (Wolf et al. 2008)

as a means to assess pre-training competencies in face recognition, testing face

memory, holistic recognition, and recognition of identity across changes in view-

point and expressions. The main result was that after training, children in the

treatment group showed significant improvements in their analytic recognition of

the mouth region and the holistic processing of faces based on eye features

compared to children in the control group. These findings suggest that the LFI!training program is an effective tool for improving the face processing skills of

children with ASD.

Despite its strengths, there are still some significant limitations to most

computer-based intervention programs in face processing. First, the programs

emphasize the recognition, but not the production of facial expressions and

hence, do not address the spontaneous facial exchanges that occur during daily

encounters. Second, conventional programs utilize static face images rather than

dynamic images. Research suggests that children with special needs are specifically

impaired in the perception of dynamic images (Gepner et al. 2001; Rump et al.

2009). Third, the games employ a bank of stock faces that are unfamiliar to the child

and thus, the child may be less motivated to learn these faces and the face skills

learned on the computer are less likely to show transfer to the everyday world.

Promising New Technologies

Touch screen devices, such as iPads, have many advantages over standard desktop

and laptop computers in terms of their affordability, portability, and usability. For

children with ASD, the touch screen tablet offers a natural interface where the

relationship between the user’s finger movement and the program operation is

direct and intuitive. Currently under development at the Center of Autism Research,

Technology and Education (CARTE) at the University of Victoria, is a tablet

version of the Let’s Face It! 2.0 platform (“this time it’s personal”). The new

program incorporates an innovative feature in which the user can personalize the

content for the LFI! games using the iPad camera. In the Capture mode of the

program, players record two-second video and audio clips via the cameras built in

the touch screen tablet (see Fig. 6). Depending on the child’s interests, the video

snippets can include images of family members, friends, pets, toys, favorite char-

acters from movies, etc. The player can then organize the videos into personalized


folders, such as images of the child’s friends, their family, their pets, etc., by

entering the Sort mode of the program. The folders can be used as content for the

LFI! games through a simple “drag-and-drop” operation. It is speculated that by

using content that is personally meaningful to the child, the LFI! 2.0 platform will

be personally engaging, and the skills acquired will directly transfer to recognition

of people in the child’s real life.

An exciting new technology is the development of virtual reality systems.

Virtual reality allows the user to spontaneously interact with objects and people

in a computer-simulated three-dimensional environment. Virtual reality systems

are a suitable learning method for children with ASD because they provide a safe

virtual training environment for independent exploration and feedback. It is pro-

posed that virtual systems offer an engaging gaming environment that can enhance

the motivation of the user and simulate skills that readily transfer to the real world

(for a review, see Parsons and Cobb 2011). Recently, Mundy and colleagues at the

University of California, Davis, developed a virtual reality program to help children

with ASD acquire better skills in eye contact. In their game, the computer tracks the

location of the participant’s eye fixations through a pair of virtual reality glasses. In

one scenario, the participant is placed in a classroom scene and asked to interact

with their virtual buddies while maintaining eye contact. If they initiate and

maintain eye contact, they receive reward points, but if they fail to make or sustain

eye contact, their virtual buddy disappears from the display. Virtual reality training

can help children with ASD learn important social face processes while providing

Fig. 6 Capture, Sort, and Play. Examples of possible interface for the capture, sort, and play mode

of LFI! 2.0. From http://web.uvic.ca/�carte/technology.html. With permission from the Center for

Autism Research, Technology and Education (CARTE) in University of Victoria


http://web.uvic.ca/~carte/technology.html

http://web.uvic.ca/~carte/technology.html

real-time positive and negative feedback. In this game, the player learns that failure

to make eye contact can lead to negative social consequence. Supported by the

safety net of a virtual environment, children with ASD can develop socially

appropriate behaviors that are transferrable to the real social world situations.

These two projects are just samples of the new and powerful technologies that

can be harnessed to teach children with ASD how to recognize faces and expres-

sions. With the development of technology and economy, these somewhat costly

technology products will eventually be affordable to the average family and will

benefit children with ASD.

Key Terms

Holistic Face Processing. The integration of the representations of individual facialfeatures as a whole, which is more than the sum of the individual parts.

Face Inversion Effect. Recognition of faces is more accurate when faces are

presented upright than inverted. The inversion effect is disproportionate,

which could be reflected by the fact that it is larger for faces than for any other

object category.

Face Composite Effect. It is harder to identify one half of a composite face with the

top half of one person and the bottom half of another person if the inconsistent

other half-face is spatially aligned with the target half rather than misaligned.

Whole Face Advantage. Eyes or mouths can be better discriminated when these

parts are embedded in a full face than when they are shown in isolation. This

effect has been found only for upright faces, not for inverted faces, and it is

stronger for faces than non-face stimuli.

Perceptual Expertise. A more efficient way of encoding information distinguishing

objects within at a subordinate level, and processes these subordinate level

classifications as quickly as the basic level of classification.

Event-Related Potentials (ERPs). ERP is a method to measure the response of

electrical activity to a certain cognitive stimuli from the scalp. These electrical

activities are in the form of voltage fluctuations, which are the results of the

neuron activities in the brain.

Randomized Clinical Trial. A study in which the participants are assigned by

chance to separate groups that compare different treatments; neither the

researchers nor the participants can choose which group. Using chance to assign

people to groups means that the groups will be similar and that the treatments

they receive can be compared objectively.

Key Facts of Holistic Face Processing

• Faces are processed holistically.

• Holistic face processing is a kind of perceptual expertise that typically developed

individuals have.


• Inverted faces, faces with misaligned halves, and isolated face features are not

processed holistically.

• Holistic face processing is crucial for successful face recognition.

• Children with ASD do not process face holistically, which could be a main

reason for their face recognition deficiency.

• Holistic processing of faces of children with ASD can be improved through

training.

Summary Points

• Face recognition is essential for successful social interaction.

• The face recognition deficit might be the symptom or the cause of the social and

communication deficits of children with ASD.

• Children with ASD do not recognize faces as well as typically developed

children.

• Children with ASD do not regard faces as special objects among other non-face

objects in the environment.

• Despite the rich information provided by the eye region, children with ASD

show eye avoidance while processing a face.

• Holistic face processing is critical for the successful recognition of faces, but

children with ASD do not process faces holistically.

• The Face Expertise Training and the Let’s Face It! program are effective for

helping children with ASD improve their face recognition abilities.

• Touch screen tablet and virtual reality technology are promising new tools for

the intervention of the face recognition ability of children with ASD.

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Teaching Children with Autism to Recognize Faces

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