“You seem familiar, but I can’t place your face”
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- “You seem familiar, but I can’t place your face”
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“You seem familiar, but I can’t place your face”
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[post_content] => Practice Passage (Question 1-5)
*This passage is the property of Khan Academy and has been reformatted into an AAMC-style interface in their entirety by MedLife Mastery. MedLife Mastery does not endorse and is not an affiliate of Khan Academy.
Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize familiar people based on facial information alone. Prosopagnosia, often called facial blindness, can be acquired through lesion, stroke, head trauma, or manifested without any discernible cause. Other patients with prosopagnosia may have developmental prosopagnosia (DP), which is characterized by a lifelong deficit in facial recognition and cannot be traced to acquired brain damage. A patient with DP may not be aware of this deficit because they would form the ability to recognize people by other distinguishing features that are unrelated to their facial characteristics. For patients with DP, the ability to recognize objects can be completely unaffected or only slightly impaired, but they may struggle to recognize close family members, friends, or themselves. At one time, DP was believed to be an extremely rare disorder, with only 9 case studies conducted between 1947 and 2001. In recent years this belief has been challenged as increased numbers of patients are diagnosed with DP, and researchers now believe that as many as 1 in 50 people may have some form of prosopagnosia.
A researcher interested in prosopagnosia conducts an Internet survey in which respondents click a link, sign into a Social Media site, and are connected to a test battery that shows them a series of photos of famous faces. Each face is isolated from any other identifying features and is presented with eyes forward, as shown in Figure 1, which shows the isolated face of Barack Obama, adapted from President Obama’s 2008 Official Presidential Portrait.
As each photo appears, the subject is asked to provide the name they associate with the presented face. If the subject is not able to remember a name, they are told to provide a description of the famous person's work or experiences. Once the subject submits this response, the famous person's name is revealed and the subject is asked to self-report whether their response was correct or incorrect. If the name presented is unfamiliar, the subject selects a radio button labeled, “I do not know this person” and their response is not counted against their accuracy score. Afterwards, the researcher calculates the percentage of correct answers, excluding the pictures described as unfamiliar. The percentage of faces recognized by each respondent is presented in Figure 2, and mean accuracy across all respondents is 82%.
Figure 1
Figure 2
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[question] => Based on the information in the passage, which of these would describe the most accurate top-down processing that a prosopagnosic might use to recognize faces?
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[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
While skin color and height may be enough to recognize a person when that person is expected, a prosopagnosic often does not gain any useful information from eye color. In fact, in most studies there is no significant difference between the recognition of faces with or without eyes.
While monocular cues may aid in the recognition of the person, they may also be misinterpreted and cause a misidentification.
The interpretation of gait, tone of voice, and context to recognize a person describes the most accurate top-down process to recognize a face for a prosopagnosic.
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[each_answer] => A. The use of eye color, skin color, and height to recognize the person.
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[each_answer] => B. The use of monocular cues such as lighting and shading to recognize the person.
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[each_answer] => C. The use of facial cues to recognize the person.
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[each_answer] => D. The interpretation of gait, tone of voice, and context to recognize the person.
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[question] => Which of the following brain areas could produce symptoms of prosopagnosia if damaged?
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[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
Damage to Wernicke’s area is associated with language losses.
Damage to the cerebellum is associated with balance and coordination dysfunction.
Damage to the frontal lobe is associated with changes in personality and cognitive processing.
The fusiform gyrus is a part of the visual system in the brain, and plays a role in high level visual processing and recognition. Damage to this part of the brain could result in prosopagnosia.
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[each_answer] => A. Fusiform gyrus
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[each_answer] => B. Cerebellum
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[each_answer] => C. Frontal lobe
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[each_answer] => D. Wernicke’s area
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[quiz_unique_key] => 83407773
[question] => Which of these people are likely to be diagnosed with DP?
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Developmental Prosopagnosia occurs from early in life, possibly from birth.
Developmental Prosopagnosia does not occur as a result of trauma.
A 31-year-old woman who has always had trouble with faces is most likely to be diagnosed with DP.
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[each_answer] => A. A 31-year-old woman who has always had trouble with faces.
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[each_answer] => B. A 65-year-old woman who recently had a stroke and is having trouble naming faces.
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[each_answer] => C. A 12-year-old boy who has a lesion on the occipital lobe and can no longer recognize shapes, objects, or people.
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[each_answer] => D. A 45-year-old man who may have had head trauma early in life and has always had trouble with faces.
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[question] => Which of these could be a possible reason for the extremely low score in the 6th respondent?
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[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
Since most people seemed to be able to identify the ‘famous’ faces presented, it is unlikely that the choice of faces presented affected respondent 6’s results.
By giving the respondent the option of choosing a radio button labeled “I do not know this person” and removing the response from the results if the name was not recognized, the researcher controlled for construct validity.
Colorblindness should not affect one’s ability to identify faces.
The respondent purposefully responded incorrectly.
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[each_answer] => A. The respondent did not know most of the faces presented.
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[each_answer] => B. The researcher failed to check whether the subject was colorblind.
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[each_answer] => C. The researcher chose faces that most people did not know.
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[each_answer] => D. The respondent purposefully responded incorrectly.
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[question] => The researcher decides to examine the results item by item, and finds that one famous face has been mis-identified by every participant – they all name her as a different actress! He realizes that the photo he chose makes the actress look like a different woman. In terms of psychometric properties, what does this item have?
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[description] => Reason for the Correct Answer:
Items that are high in validity accurately address the construct.
In this example, the participants are unable to correctly name the actress pictured – not because they can’t think of a name (would indicate some level of prosopagnosia), but because the photo isn’t an accurate representation of her. This means that the item is probably not a valid test for prosopagnosia.
However, because every respondent gave the wrong answer, the item is reliable – the answers are consistent.
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[each_answer] => A. Reliability, but not validity.
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[each_answer] => B. Validity and reliability.
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[each_answer] => C. Neither validity nor reliability.
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[each_answer] => D. Validity but not reliability.
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Figure 2
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