Decisional space determines saccadic reaction times in healthy observers and acquired prosopagnosia

Determining the familiarity and identity of a face have been considered as independent processes. Covert face recognition in cases of acquired prosopagnosia, as well as rapid detection of familiarity have been taken to support this view. We tested P.S. a well-described case of acquired prosopagnosia, and two healthy controls (her sister and daughter) in two saccadic reaction time (SRT) experiments. Stimuli depicted their family members and well-matched unfamiliar distractors in the context of binary gender, or familiarity decisions. Observers' minimum SRTs were estimated with Bayesian approaches. For gender decisions, P.S. and her daughter achieved sufficient performance, but displayed different SRT distributions. For familiarity decisions, her daughter exhibited above chance level performance and minimum SRTs corresponding to those reported previously in healthy observers, while P.S. performed at chance. These findings extend previous observations, indicating that decisional space determines performance in both the intact and impaired face processing system.