Cerebral Palsy

The unfavorable treatment of people with physical disfigurements is well-documented, yet little is known about basic perceptual and cognitive responses to disfigurement. Here, we identify a specialized pattern of cognitive processing consistent with the hypothesis that disfigurements act as heuristic cues to contagious disease. Disfigurements are often invariant across time and difficult to conceal, and thus observers can detect the presence of the (perceived) contagion cue without necessarily remembering the particular individual bearing that cue. Indeed, despite the fact that disfigured faces were especially likely to hold attention (Study 1), disfigured individuals were often confused with one another and thus not well remembered later (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our results for stigmatization of people with and without physical abnormalities and suggest the possibility that cognitive mechanisms for processing social information may be functionally tuned to the variant nature of important cues.

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