Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Prosopagnosia has been reported as a visual agnosia with a high or full selectivity for faces as opposed to other objects. In other words, prosopagnosic patients display severe problems with recognising familiar faces (i.e. famous persons or family members) but show little or no difficulty in recognising everyday objects (i.e. chairs, appliances). This essay will first explain the two opposing arguments concerning of whether prosopagnosia is indeed a result of a damage to a face recognition module. Thereafter it will give details to the theoretical background of face recognition and prosopagnosia. Lastly it will focus on a specific case study suggestive of ‘pure’ prosopagnosia. This case study will illustrate the findings supporting the existence of a face-module. In order to adequately evaluate such finding other analogous or undermining studies will be considered. Findings from a vast research have highlighted two opposing arguments concerning prosopagnosia. Firstly, that there is a specific ‘face-module’ dedicated to face recognition. This has been called the holistic hypothesis, that suggests that some areas of the brain are better at processing objects into parts (i.e. doors and windows of a house) and some are