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Updated: Jun 8, 2026

Holistic Facial Composite Creation and Subsequent Video Line-up Eyewitness Identification Paradigm
Published on: December 24, 2015
Holistic perception of the individual face is specific and necessary: evidence from an extensive case study of
Thomas Busigny1, Sven Joubert, Olivier Felician
1Université Catholique de Louvain, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education (PSP), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. thomas.busigny@uclouvain.be
Abstract:
We present an extensive investigation (24 experiments) of a new case of prosopagnosia following right unilateral damage, GG, with the aim of addressing two classical issues: (1) Can a visual recognition impairment truly be specific to faces? (2) What is the nature of acquired prosopagnosia? We show that GG recognizes nonface objects perfectly and quickly, even when it requires fine-grained analysis to individualize these objects. He is also capable of perceiving objects and faces as integrated wholes, as indicated by normal Navon effect, 3D-figures perception and perception of Mooney and Arcimboldo face stimuli. However, the patient could not perceive individual faces holistically, showing no inversion, composite, or whole-part advantage effects for faces. We conclude that an occipito-temporal right hemisphere lesion may lead to a specific impairment of holistic perception of individual items, a function that appears critical for normal face recognition but not for object recognition.
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