A normed study of pace recognition in autism and related disorders

Although the interpretation of studies of face recognition in older childre n, adolescents, and adults with autism is complicated by the fact that part icipating samples and adopted methodologies vary significantly, there is ne vertheless strong evidence indicating processing peculiarities even when ta sk performance is not deficient. Much less is known about face recognition abilities in younger children with autism. This study employed a well-norme d task of face recognition to measure this ability in 102 young children wi th autism, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDDNOS ), and non-PDD disorders (mental retardation and language disorders) matche d on chronological age and nonverbal mental age, and in a subsample of 51 c hildren divided equally in the same three groups matched on chronological a ge and verbal mental age. There were pronounced deficits of face recognitio n in the autistic group relative to the other nonverbally matched and verba lly matched groups. Performance on two comparison tasks did not reveal sign ificant differences when verbal ability was adequately controlled. We concl uded that young children with autism have face recognition deficits that ca nnot be attributed to overall cognitive abilities or task demands. In contr ast to controls, there was a lower correlation between performance on face recognition and nonverbal intelligence, suggesting that in autism face reco gnition is less correlated with general cognitive capacity. Contrary to our expectation, children with PDDNOS did not show face recognition deficits.