Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 48, Issue 13, November 2010, Pages 3955-3960
Neuropsychologia

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Lack of developmental improvement on a face memory task during adolescence in autism

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.08.024Get rights and content

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are associated with abnormalities in face memory, which evidence suggests has a protracted development through adolescence. The development of face memory in people with and without ASD, from 9 to 29 years old, was examined using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). Results indicate that the developmental improvement evident from adolescence to adulthood typically was not apparent in individuals with ASD. While children and adolescents with ASD performed similarly to typically developing individuals comparable in age and IQ, adults with ASD displayed limitations on the CFMT. The pattern of performance was constant across conditions despite differences in the timing of the presentation and delay. This atypical development in ASD is consistent with the view that the processing of complex visual stimuli continues to develop through adolescence, along with the function and structure of the temporal lobes, but that this process is disrupted in ASD. This result underscores the importance of characterizing adolescent development for understanding ASD, and suggests additional opportunities for intervention.

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) affect not just the starting point of development but also how development unfolds (Minshew, Sung, Jones, & Furman, 2004). Such differences in the course of development may be more striking for skills that have a protracted development through adolescence. The current paper examines the developmental trajectory of one such skill, face memory, in individuals with and without ASD. In this paper, face memory refers to recognizing unfamiliar faces. While this task is complex and engages multiple processes (attention, perception, memory, and matching), it also has high ecological validity, approximating how we interact with faces in the environment. Face memory has been reported to be impaired in high-functioning children and adults with ASD (Faja et al., 2009, Scherf et al., 2008a, Wallace et al., 2008, Wolf et al., 2008), but this deficit is not always evident (Sterling et al., 2008). It is also controversial whether these memory deficits are specific to faces. Impairments in face memory have been reported along with typical, or even better than typical, performance with cars and houses (Wallace et al., 2008, Wolf et al., 2008). However, similar impairments have also been reported with non-faces (Behrmann et al., 2006, Scherf et al., 2008a).

Examining the development of face memory provides insight into the neural underpinnings of ASD, since research now indicates that the brain regions related to face representation mature late and that this maturation is impacted by ASD. Face-related activation in the fusiform face area (FFA) increases from adolescence to adulthood typically, as face memory improves (Golarai, Liberman, Yoon, & Grill-Spector, 2010). In contrast activation specific to faces in or near FFA appears both decreased and more posterior in young adolescents with ASD compared to matched controls (Scherf, Luna, Minshew, & Behrmann, 2010). In terms of brain structure Raznahan et al. (2009) report that cortical thinning in temporal regions occurs typically during adolescence but does not happen during adolescence in ASD. This differential development results in increased cortical thickness in adults with ASD compared to controls, potentially affecting face recognition and other high-level visual skills. Similarly, disruption in the development of white matter in the temporal lobe is evident in ASD. A Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) study suggests that white matter tracts in temporal regions continue to mature into adolescence but that these changes do not occur in ASD (Lee et al., 2007). Reduced connectivity between temporal and frontal regions, reported to be late developing typically (on a phonological task; Bitan, Cheon, Lu, Burman, & Booth, 2009), also affects face memory in adults with ASD (Koshino et al., 2008).

Thus, limitations in face memory in ASD may not be fully apparent until maturity is reached. To examine this possibility, we used the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) developed to identify relatively subtle deficits in adults with prosopagnosia (Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006). Individuals with ASD, 9–29 years old, matched individually to typically developing individuals on age and IQ, were tested on the CFMT. The CFMT limits the use of non-facial information and feature matching strategies, which may decrease the sensitivity of other standardized face processing tasks. Importantly, the CFMT provides increasing levels of difficulty to control for ceiling and floor effects, which often complicate developmental studies (Crookes & McKone, 2009). The CFMT also exhibits a robust inversion effect (i.e., poorer performance when faces are upside-down), indicating that it tests a skill related to upright faces. One proposal of such a skill is the use of holistic/configural information (perceptual integration of elements into a whole and/or spacing between features), aspects of which may develop late (Diamond and Carey, 1986, Mondloch et al., 2002) and be impaired in ASD (Behrmann et al., 2006).

Given the accumulating evidence of atypical maturation of brain processes in ASD, we hypothesized that, while performance on the CFMT would improve with age typically, it would not in ASD. While the use of the CFMT does not allow us to disentangle exactly what is developing late, or whether it is specific to face memory, it seemed likely to be sensitive to late development. Indeed, the typical developmental literature indicates a lack of consensus on a particular element of face memory that develops late. While more traditional views suggest that late face development reflects face-specific perceptual skills and/or expertise coming online (Diamond and Carey, 1986, Mondloch et al., 2002), recent evidence indicates that development of face recognition reflects improvement in general cognitive and/or visual processes, which may impact a range of tasks (Crookes & McKone, 2009). In either case, differences in the development of these skills during adolescence provide insight into the limitations in visual processing and the dysmaturation of brain processes in ASD.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants included 34 individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (31 males) from 9 to 29 years old and 34 typically developing control subjects (30 males) matched individually to the participants with ASD on age (±1 year in children, 2 years in adults) and IQ on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (±15 points) (Table 1). These included children (9–12, N = 8/group), adolescents (13–17, N = 12/group), and adults (18–29, N = 14/group). Individuals with ASD were recruited through the

Results

Percent correct (Fig. 3, Fig. 4) was examined using repeated measures ANOVA with condition (Conditions 1–3) as a within subject factor, group (TD, ASD) and age (children, adolescents, adults) as between subjects factors, and spatial span as a covariate.1 This ANOVA revealed main effects of group (F(1,61) = 14.68, p < .001, partial eta2 = .19); condition (F(2,122) = 

Discussion

The CMFT task was used to characterize the development of face memory in individuals with and without ASD. Results indicate that performance on this face memory task continues to improve into adulthood typically but not in individuals with ASD similar in age and IQ. This pattern of results lead to impairments in adulthood. The level of deficit documented in the adults with ASD did not differ from that previously reported in adults with congenital prosopagnosia, while the typically developing

Acknowledgements

This work was done at the University of Pittsburgh and supported by Autism Speaks Grant 04593 to BL, NIH HD055748 to NM, NIMH 5 R01 MH067924 to BL, and NIMH KO1 081191 to KOH. We are very grateful to the participants and their families, Catherine Wright, the staff at the ACE project, and the Autism Speaks organization. We also would like to thank Brad Duchaine, Ken Nakayama and their collaborators for making the CFMT available to the public.

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