Reflections on the Self: A Case Study of a Prosopagnosic Patient

Abstract

We examined the ability of a patient suffering from Prosopagnosia—an impairment of face recognition following neurological damage—to draw accurate trait inferences from faces of persons he knows but fails to recognize. Although not reliably greater than chance when judging the faces of well-known others, his trait ratings achieved considerable accuracy when the face judged was his. We examine several explanations designed to account for this dissociation without having to invoke preferential activation of trait self-knowledge, but each is found lacking. We conclude that self-knowledge can be activated by presentation of face cues even in the absence of overt identification. Implications of these findings for mirror self-recognition as a means of detecting the onset of self-knowledge are discussed.