The goal of this preregistered scoping review is to create an overview of the research on developmental prosopagnosia (DP). Through analysis of all empirical studies of DP in adults, we investigate 1) how DP is conceptualized and defined, 2) how individuals are classified with DP and 3) which aspects of DP are investigated in the literature. We reviewed 224 peer-reviewed studies of DP. Our analysis of the literature reveals that while DP is predominantly defined as a lifelong face recognition impairment in the absence of acquired brain injury and intellectual/cognitive problems, there is far from consensus on the specifics of the definition with some studies emphasizing e.g., deficits in face perception, discrimination and/or matching as core characteristics of DP. These differences in DP definitions is further reflected in the vast heterogeneity in classification procedures. Only about half of the included studies explicitly state how they classify individuals with DP, and these studies adopt 40 different assessment tools. The two most frequently studied aspects of DP are the role of holistic processing and the specificity of face processing, and alongside a substantial body of neuroimaging studies of DP, this paints a picture of a research field whose scientific interests and aims are rooted in cognitive neuropsychology and neuroscience. We argue that these roots - alongside the heterogeneity in DP definition and classification - may have limited the scope and interest of DP research unnecessarily, and we point to new avenues of research for the field.

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by face recognition problems. Psychometrically sound self-report measures of face recognition problems are important tools in classification of DP. A widely used measure of such problems is the 20-item prosopagnosia index (PI20). Here, we present a Danish translation of the PI20 (PI20_DK). We administered the PI20_DK alongside three objective measures of face and object processing performance to 119 participants to validate the PI20_DK. Further, we assess the underlying factor structure of the PI20_DK. Finally, as the first study in the field, we investigate the association between self-reported face recognition ability and face perception performance. The project was preregistered prior to data collection. The results suggest excellent convergent validity, discriminant validity and internal consistency for the PI20_DK. A confirmatory factor analysis, however, indicates a suboptimal fit of the PI20_DK to a one factor solution. An investigation of the association between the PI20_DK and face perception suggests that the poor fit may reflect that the PI20_DK measures problems with face recognition in general and not specifically face memory problems.

Anomia is a common consequence following brain damage and a central symptom in semantic dementia (SD) and post-stroke aphasia (PSA), for instance. Picture naming tests are often used in clinical assessments and experience suggests that items vary systematically in their difficulty. Despite clinical intuitions and theoretical accounts, however, the existence and determinants of such a naming difficulty gradient remain to be empirically established and evaluated. Seizing the unique opportunity of two large-scale datasets of semantic dementia and post-stroke aphasia patients assessed with the same picture naming test, we applied an Item Response Theory (IRT) approach and we (a) established that an item naming difficulty gradient exists, which (b) partly differs between patient groups, and is (c) related in part to a limited number of psycholinguistic properties - frequency and familiarity for SD, frequency and word length for PSA. Our findings offer exciting future avenues for new, adaptive, time-efficient, and patient-tailored approaches to naming assessment and therapy.

Retrieval stopping, the intentional suppression of unwanted memories, plays a critical role in emotion regulation and cognitive control, yet little is known about its function in adolescence. Using an autobiographical Think/No-Think paradigm, we investigated whether adolescents can control the retrieval of personal emotional events. Forty-nine adolescent participants (13-17) generated positive and negative autobiographical memories for retrieval or suppression in the Think/No-Think task. Memory accuracy and vividness were assessed before and after. Adolescents showed suppression-induced forgetting: negative memories were recalled less accurately and more slowly. Vividness ratings declined for suppressed memories, but not significantly more than negative baseline memories, suggesting a spill-over effect of retrieval stopping to all negative memories, rather than an effect confined to the suppressed negative memories. Overall, the results provide evidence that adolescents can intentionally suppress autobiographical emotional memories. These findings extend investigations in adults by showing inhibitory control over memory retrieval is functional during adolescence, a critical period for emotion regulation. The flexibility that the autobiographical TNT task offers allows it to be extended to fears or worries, offering a promising avenue for applied research. Future research should examine its potential as a scalable, low-cost supplement to therapy, supporting emotion regulation and mental health in youth.

Developmental prosopagnosia ( dp ) is a lifelong face recognition deficit typically studied within the framework of cognitive neuropsychology. Although dp has often been investigated as a face perception impairment, little is known about how individuals with dp experience seeing faces. To address this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with six adults with dp to explore their lived experience of face perception. Interviews were analyzed using a descriptive phenomenological method and revealed a general structure characterized by dynamic oscillations between i) fragmentary perception of affectively charged features (e.g., eyes, nose, mouth) and ii) an atmospheric gestalt. This holistic atmosphere conveys relational and emotional content (e.g., familiarity, intent, mood) but is contingent on accurate recognition and susceptible to disruption by movement, cropping or contextual changes. These descriptions of an altered perceptual experience in dp contextualize existing cognitive accounts of dp and hold implications for the intersubjective and ethical role of faces in dp .