Why autistic people can't recognize faces well

Michigan, March 20: Have you ever wondered how we recognize people’s faces? Well, the answer lies in the fact that the eyes of a person appear darker than the cheeks and the forehead in the normal light.

The study by researchers at the Michigan Institute of Technology (MIT) throws light on why people with autism find it difficult to recognize faces as compared to the normal people, especially in the photo negatives.

The findings of the study appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The lead researcher and an associate professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the MIT, Pawan Sinha, said that in the normal lighting conditions, the eyes of a person appear to be darker than his cheeks and his forehead.

He believes that people with autism find it hard to recognize photo negatives simply because the photographic negatives disrupt the strong regularities around the eyes.

“You have not taken away any information, but somehow these faces are much harder to recognise,” stated Pawan Sinha, a researcher of Indian origin and senior author of the study.

For the study, the subjects were required to identify photos of celebrities in positive and negative images. Apart from that, they were also asked to recognize the famous personalities in another type of image in which the persons’ eyes were reverted back to normal level, while the rest of the image remained in negative.

The results of the study indicated that subjects could easily recognize “contrast chimera” images.

“The relationships around the eyes seem to be particularly significant,” Sinha maintained.

Previous studies had pointed out that people with autism do not focus on the eyes. Rather, they focus on the mouths to recognize faces because neuronal responses of autistic people differ than those of normal people.

The study can prove helpful for scientists involved in studying facial recognition skills in autism sufferers, especially children, said Sinha.