and levels of impairment), it has been argued that face perception involves a number of stages, each of which can cause qualitative differences in impairment that different persons with prosopagnosia may exhibit. this sort of evidence has been crucial in supporting the theory that there may be a specific face perception system in the brain. most researchers agree that the facial perception process is holistic rather than featural, as it is for perception of most objects. a holistic perception of the face does not involve any explicit representation of local features (i.e., eyes, nose, mouth, etc.), but rather considers the face as a whole. as the prototypical face has a specific spatial layout (eyes are always located above nose, and nose located above mouth), it is beneficial to use a holistic approach to recognize individual/specific faces from a group of similar layouts. this holistic processing of the face is exactly what is damaged in prosopagnosics. they are able to recognize the specific spatial layout and characteristics of facial features, but they are unable to process them as one entire face. this is counterintuitive to many people, as not everyone believes faces are "special" or perceived in a different way from other objects in the rest of the world. though evidence suggests that other visual objects are processed in a holistic manner (e.g., dogs in dog experts), the size of these effects are smaller and are less consistently demonstrated than with faces. in a study conducted by diamond and carey, they showed this to be true by performing tests on dog-show judges. they showed pictures of dogs to the judges and to a control group and they then inverted those same pictures and showed them again. the dog-show judges had greater difficulty in recognizing the dogs once inverted compared to the control group; the inversion effect, the increased difficulty in recognizing a picture once inverted, was shown to be in effect. it was previously believed that the inversion effect was associated only with faces, but this study shows that it may apply to any category of expertise. it has also been argued that prosopagnosia may be a general impairment in understanding how individual perceptual components make up the structure or gestalt of an object. psychologist martha farah has been particularly associated with this view. children developmental prosopagnosia can be a difficult thing for a child to both understand and cope with. many adults with developmental prosopagnosia report that for a long time they had no idea that they had a deficit in face processing, unaware that others could distinguish people solely on facial differences. prosopagnosia in children may be overlooked; they may just appear to be very shy or slightly odd due to their inability to recognize faces. they may also have a hard time making friends, as they may not recognize their classmates. they often make friends with children who have very clear, distinguishing features. children with prosopagnosia may also have difficulties following the plots of television shows and movies, as they have trouble recognizing the different characters. they tend to gravitate towards cartoons, in which characters have simple but well-defined characteristics, and tend to wear the same clothes, may be strikingly different colours or even different species. prosopagnosiac children even have a hard time telling family members apart, or recognizing people out of context (e.g., the teacher in a grocery store). some have difficulty recognising themselves in group photographs. additionally, children with prosopagnosia can have a difficult time at school, as many school professionals are not well versed in prosopagnosia, if they are aware of the disorder at all. recently, a database of children's faces and test for child face perception has been developed, which may offer professionals a way to evaluate if a child has prosopagnosia. notable people the following is a list of public figures and other notable people with prosopagnosia. alan alda (born 1936), american actor duncan bannatyne (born 1949), scottish entrepreneur sara benincasa (born 1980) american comedian and author dave chalk (born 1963), canadian entrepreneur chuck close (1940–2021), american painter paul foot (born 1973), english comedian stephen fry (born 1957), english actor robert gascoyne-cecil, 3rd marquess of salisbury (1830–1903) jane goodall (born 1934), english primatologist john hickenlooper (born 1952), us senator and former governor of colorado margaret kerry (born 1929), american actress and reference model for tinker bell karl kruszelnicki (born 1948), australian science communicator markos moulitsas (born 1971), american blogger and founder of dailykos.com brad pitt (born 1963), american actor and film producer oliver sacks (1933–2015), british neurologist mary ann sieghart (born 1961), english journalist and radio presenter victoria, crown princess of sweden (born 1977) jim woodring (born 1952), american cartoonist steve wozniak (born 1950), american computer engineer and co-founder of apple inc.