SPECIFICITY OF FACE RECOGNITION - RECOGNITION OF EXEMPLARS OF NON-FACE OBJECTS IN PROSOPAGNOSIA

We investigated whether the recognition deficits of two patients with long-standing prosopagnosia would also extend to exemplars within visu ally homogeneous object categories other than faces. Categorical objec t recognition was unimpaired in both patients. One patient was impaire d in recognizing exemplars within both ''living'' and ''nonliving'' ob ject categories. In contrast, the other patient performed at normal le vels in exemplar recognition. These results provide further evidence t hat prosopagnosia does not necessarily reflect a general disorder in e xemplar recognition, but can be a face-specific deficit.