Two cases of selective developmental voice-recognition impairments

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

  • Claudia Roswandowitz - , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Author)
  • Samuel R Mathias - , Yale University (Author)
  • Florian Hintz - , Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Author)
  • Jens Kreitewolf - , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Author)
  • Stefanie Schelinski - , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Author)
  • Katharina von Kriegstein - , Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin (Author)

Abstract

Recognizing other individuals is an essential skill in humans and in other species. Over the last decade, it has become increasingly clear that person-identity recognition abilities are highly variable. Roughly 2% of the population has developmental prosopagnosia, a congenital deficit in recognizing others by their faces. It is currently unclear whether developmental phonagnosia, a deficit in recognizing others by their voices, is equally prevalent, or even whether it actually exists. Here, we aimed to identify cases of developmental phonagnosia. We collected more than 1,000 data sets from self-selected German individuals by using a web-based screening test that was designed to assess their voice-recognition abilities. We then examined potentially phonagnosic individuals by using a comprehensive laboratory test battery. We found two novel cases of phonagnosia: AS, a 32-year-old female, and SP, a 32-year-old male; both are otherwise healthy academics, have normal hearing, and show no pathological abnormalities in brain structure. The two cases have comparable patterns of impairments: both performed at least 2 SDs below the level of matched controls on tests that required learning new voices, judging the familiarity of famous voices, and discriminating pitch differences between voices. In both cases, only voice-identity processing per se was affected: face recognition, speech intelligibility, emotion recognition, and musical ability were all comparable to controls. The findings confirm the existence of developmental phonagnosia as a modality-specific impairment and allow a first rough prevalence estimate.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2348-53
Number of pages6
JournalCurrent Biology
Volume24
Issue number19
Publication statusPublished - 6 Oct 2014
Peer-reviewedYes
Externally publishedYes

External IDs

Scopus 84908193649
ORCID /0000-0001-7989-5860/work/142244385

Keywords

Keywords

  • Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Agnosia/diagnosis, Auditory Perception, Female, Germany/epidemiology, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Recognition, Psychology, Voice, Young Adult