Social cognition
How do people with Williams syndrome perceive face-like patterns?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Despite their strong social drive, individuals with Williams syndrome struggle to recognize face-like patterns made from food arrangements compared to typically developing peers.
Key findings
Typically developing controls recognized a face much earlier in the sequence, on average at image 3.95, while individuals with Williams syndrome did not see a face until image 8.18 on average. Overall, the Williams syndrome group recognized faces in only 22% of the images, compared to 62% for the control group. Three of the 20 individuals with Williams syndrome failed to recognize a face even in the most obvious, final image.
Methodology
Researchers compared 20 individuals with Williams syndrome to 20 typically developing control participants matched for age and gender. Participants completed the Face-n-Food task, viewing 10 images composed of food items arranged in patterns that ranged from weakly to strongly resembling a face. On each image, participants spontaneously described what they saw, and their answers were coded for whether they recognized a face.
Limitations
This study cannot explain the exact neural or cognitive mechanism driving this deficit, such as whether it stems from a preference for processing local details over a whole image. The small sample size of 20 participants per group limits the generalizability of the findings to all individuals with Williams syndrome. Additionally, the study does not test how these individuals process real human faces, which may engage different social and cognitive pathways than food-based illusions.
How this study connects
Role on claims
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Individuals with Williams syndrome struggle to spontaneously organize local, non-face objects (such as food arrangements) into a global face-like configuration compared to typically developing peers.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
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