Italian Famous Face Test: Normative data from neurotypical individuals and efficacy in detecting face recognition difficulties in Autism Spectrum Disorder

The faces we see in daily life exist on a continuum of familiarity, ranging from personally familiar to famous to unfamiliar faces. Thus, when assessing face recognition abilities, adequate evaluation measures should be employed to discriminate between each of these processes and their relative impairments. We here developed the Italian Famous Face Test (IT-FFT), a novel assessment tool for famous face recognition in typical and clinical populations. Normative data on a large sample (N= 436) of Italian neurotypical individuals (NT) were collected, assessing both familiarity (<i>d</i>’) and recognition accuracy. Next, we investigated the IT-FFA’s validity on a neurodevelopmental condition, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), often associated with face recognition deficits. Results showed ASDs’ difficulties in face recognition and in their ability to discriminate between famous and non-famous faces. Furthermore, this study explored whether both NTs and ASDs possess insights into their overall face recognition skills by correlating the Prosopagnosia Index-20 (PI-20) with the IT-FFT; a negative correlation between these measures in both groups suggests that even ASDs have insight into their (weaker) face recognition skills. Overall, our study provides the first online-based Italian test for famous faces (IT-FFT), demonstrates its sensitivity in detecting face difficulties in ASDs, and suggests spared face-related metacognitive skills in ASD.我们日常生活中所见的人脸，处于熟悉度的连续谱系之上，覆盖了个人熟悉面孔、名人面孔乃至完全陌生面孔三个区间。因此，在评估人脸识别能力时，需采用恰当的评测手段，以区分上述各类人脸识别过程及其相对应的功能损伤。 本研究开发了意大利名人面孔测试（Italian Famous Face Test, IT-FFT），一款用于评估典型发育人群与临床人群名人面孔识别能力的新型评测工具。本研究针对由436名意大利神经典型个体（neurotypical individuals, NT）组成的大样本收集了常模数据，同时评估了熟悉度辨别力指数（d’）与识别准确率两项指标。 本研究进一步针对常与人脸识别缺陷相关的神经发育障碍——孤独症谱系障碍（Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD），考察了IT-FFT的效度。研究结果显示，孤独症谱系障碍群体在人脸识别以及区分名人面孔与非名人面孔的能力上存在困难。 此外，本研究通过将面孔失认指数20（Prosopagnosia Index-20, PI-20）与IT-FFT进行相关分析，探究了神经典型个体与孤独症谱系障碍群体是否能够准确评估自身整体人脸识别能力；两组被试中两项评测指标均呈现负相关，这表明即便孤独症谱系障碍群体也能够意识到自身较弱的人脸识别能力。 综上，本研究推出了首款面向意大利人群的线上名人面孔评测工具IT-FFT，证实了其在检测孤独症谱系障碍群体人脸识别困难方面的敏感性，并表明孤独症谱系障碍群体仍保留完好的面孔相关元认知能力。