Face processing is a crucial socio-cognitive ability. Is it acquired progressively or does it constitute an innately-specified, face-processing module? The latter would be supported if some individuals with seriously impaired intelligence nonetheless showed intact face-processing abilities. Some theorists claim that @entity3297 ( @entity3297 ) provides such evidence since, despite IQs in the 50s, adolescents/adults with @entity3297 score in the normal range on standardized face-processing tests. Others argue that atypical neural and cognitive processes underlie @entity3297 face-processing proficiencies. But what about @entity1 with @entity3297 ? Do they start with typical face-processing abilities, with atypicality developing later, or are atypicalities already evident in infancy? We used an @entity1 familiarization/novelty design and compared @entity1 with @entity3297 to typically developing controls as well as to a group of @entity1 with Down syndrome matched on both mental and chronological age. @entity1 were familiarized with a schematic face, after which they saw a novel face in which either the features (eye shape) were changed or just the configuration of the original features. Configural changes were processed successfully by controls, but not by @entity1 with @entity3297 who were only sensitive to featural changes and who showed syndrome-specific profiles different from @entity1 with the other @entity245 . Our findings indicate that theorists can no longer use the case of @entity3297 to support claims that evolution has endowed the @entity1 brain with an independent face-processing module.

Face processing in XXXX is already atypical in infancy.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['human', 'infants', 'Participants', 'infant'] @entity3297 :: ('MESH:D018980', 'Disease') :: ['Williams syndrome', 'WS'] @entity245 :: ('MESH:D002658', 'Disease') :: ['neurodevelopmental disorder']
@entity3297 :: (MESH:D018980,Disease) :: ['Williams syndrome']
