Specificity of face recognition: recognition of exemplars of non-face objects in prosopagnosia

We investigated whether the recognition deficits of two patients with long-standing prosopagnosia would also extend to exemplars within visually homogeneous object categories other than faces. Categorical object recognition was unimpaired in both patients. One patient was impaired in recognizing exemplars within both "living" and "nonliving" object categories. In contrast, the other patient performed at normal levels in exemplar recognition. These results provide further evidence that prosopagnosia does not necessarily reflect a general disorder in exemplar recognition, but can be a face-specific deficit.