I dated someone who had prosopagnosia.
She didn't know that she had it until she was in college on a trip to South East Asia, and she ran into her sister in a market in Malaysia and didn't recognize her sister! She normally can recognize people but uses other cues and the fact that they were in Malaysia meant she wasn't ready for it.
When we first started dating, I had a beard. The day I shaved it off, we met up for dinner at a restaurant, and I'd sat down while waiting for her. She arrived at the restaurant and scanned for quite a bit and didn't recognize me until I waved.
Did she have troubles following movie/TV series plots? I also lived with exactly what you describe for years before realising it had a name, and looking back the strongest indication was finding it far more difficult than others to follow movies, especially if they switch between different story lines.
The Departed [0] was probably the strongest example as Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Daemon look fairly similar anyway so I was super confused for most of it.
Once I've seen someone 5-6 times it gets easier to recognise them, but it's always awkward if I meet new people in crowded situations and then "lose" them again and have to wait for them to initiate a conversation before I know who I'm supposed to be with.
I have something similar with movies with lot of characters, I confuse faces quite a bit and try to take in other cues but depending on how the movie was made it is either successful or not. But I don't think I have prosopagnosia, most likely I don't have it. In crowds I get a bit disoriented and I did confuse people but that's a whole different story, there's some anxiety when my brain has to keep track of too many people.
I've never been good at following movie plots. It does depend on the plot. "Detective" type plots where a key twist is when someone we've already seen appears in a different and unexpected place while dressed differently are the worst.
Not being able to recognize actors across movies, who plays in what movie is something I've never paid attention to.
Which meant that I didn't realise for years that part of the joke in Austin Powers is that it's the same actor playing all of the roles.
I would invite you to watch Orphan Black and try to figure out which characters are supposed to be clones or not.
The one that really gets me is when they use photographs in film/tv, a character looks at a photo and you know the rest of the audience knows who it is supposed to be, but I have no freakin idea.
I have prosopagnosia, and movies are often a problem. I recall an Agatha Christie film where the opening was set at a big dinner party. All the men were wearing dinner jackets, and we were shown lots of plot-critical conversations about expected legacies and old feuds. I gave up at that point: there was no chance of me having any clue about the plot.
Wouldn’t a custom subtitle track just for people with Prosopagnosia help? Like every time a character appears, show her/his name for 5 seconds. If there isn’t already a subculture that creates fan-made subtitle tracks, we should create one.
I also have a mild form and following movie plots can be difficult for me as well sometimes when people look really similar. In that case I concentrate a lot during the first 20-30 minutes.
Meeting new people can indeed be tough, especially when the people look very similar and normal. The most difficult/awkward situations I've encountered on the street though. It's then like: wait do I know this person and should I look again? (Or maybe a third time?) So when I'm not feeling exactly super-pumped, I just walk quickly with tunnel-vision. But through the years I've become an expert remembering certain details like hair-cut, the way people move and so on...
Sometimes I wonder whether I should tell people. Actually some really popular people have it, for instance Victoria of Sweden. I read someone else would then sometimes tell her quietly who is present.
I had a flatmate with this (or a similar condition, wouldn't have remembered the name). He'd know who I was in the context of our flat, but then blank me if I saw him on campus, where we were on different courses and didn't run into each other often.
He may have maybe thought he saw you a few times but only once (or never) was it actually you. It's a difficult condition.
As someone who has it, you learn to be cautious about "partial matches" where you recognize some elements of someone (backpack, waterbottle, gait, voice, hair style, etc) but aren't 100% sure. It's pretty embarrassing to realize that the person you just started talking to in fact is not your friend but just has the same jacket.
First time I knew about Prosopagnosia was from playing 999 on the DS. From that point on I haven't bumped into any articles about it until today (I never looked too hard into it).
Here's the sentence I liked most in the article though: "Prosopagnosia can't be treated - if neural connections are not established, they can't be created afterwards." That's pretty disheartening.
The woman in the article seems to have a pretty severe form of the condition. Most sufferers will work out coping strategies (in my case: voice, shape, gait - I have an advantage over most people when it comes to recognising people in the distance, or with their back to me) very early on in life so that social discomfort can be minimised. A lot of us are also very good listeners, with a list of question prompts to keep the other person talking in the hope they'll say something that triggers a memory association.
People do still consider me to be rude and 'stuck-up' when I ignore them in the street - but I can live with that.
I've had a milder form of this condition my entire life but only really acknowledged it a few years ago when starting a new job.
The main effect of this is that I am simply uncertain of the identity of those I encounter. A simple change in context, like a change of hair color or meeting somebody in a different setting, is enough to render them anonymous to me. There have been some deeply shameful moments... the researcher in another department who went out of her way to engage with me, until I mistook her for somebody else for an entire elevator ride. The student I ran into downtown who was hurt because his prof couldn't recall basic details of his project - I literally did not know who he was on account of his bike helmet, despite having in him in class not even a day before. Once as a child I backed away in fear from the dinner table when a stranger took my father's seat. All he had done was remove his 1980's mustache.
99% of the time this condition is invisible even to me. A normal work routine ensures that I only meet people in the places I expect them. I would never, ever mistake my wife for a hat. But if she turned up in an unexpected place, I fear I would walk right past her. And if I meet new people in rapid succession, I have almost no hope of recall unless they have conspicuous features like jewelry, tattoos or expressive hair. Art receptions are generally a breeze. Tech conferences are the worst.
Assuming we ever get to work in close quarters again, try guessing at the identity of your co-workers from behind. Almost always you'll be positive whom you're looking at. But not every time. For most people, it would be enough for the subject to turn around and provide a clear view of their face. For those with face blindness, even that may not resolve the ambiguity. Now imagine repeating this exercise at the supermarket, where you cannot expect any particular person to be present, and you can get a sense of the anxiety this condition can cause.
I stood and talked to someone for about ten minutes once before I realised he wasn’t the person I thought. I thought he was the father of my then partner, but it turned out he was an old teacher I’d had. In that particular meeting, I think I got away with it, but there have been times where I haven’t.
I have such trouble with recognising faces - including knowing I know them - but mistaking them for someone else - that I have to actively check myself before I engage with people who I’m not very familiar with.
So if you know me but don’t see me often, if you bump into me and find the conversation seems awfully generic, sorry about that.
One thing I’ve learned is that a person’s voice is much easier for me to recognise. This means I try to exchange pleasantries - even with people I know well enough that I should recognise them. I hope it comes across as friendly and jovial - which it is - but I also need the interaction to jog my memory.
> Art receptions are generally a breeze. Tech conferences are the worst.
I and some friends had the funny realization awhile back that the sort of scene where people have colorful hair, tattoos, unusual piercings, etc etc, seems to attract more than its fair share of slightly-face-blind people. Which, on reflection, makes a lot of sense.
I have exactly the same problem. I had two older ladies in my building that I thought are the same person. Fun fact: their native language was not the same and months later (after I realized my mistake) I've heard that one of them got offended because I kept greeting her in the wrong language.
I have, like, the opposite of this. I have an absolutely excellent face memory. I subjectively experience this as a separate unconscious bit of data that automatically appears in my mind when I look at someone: true if I've ever seen them before, false otherwise. I think most people have that same natural "ah-ha" or natural moment of recognition. For me, it seems to be stronger than most, based on a couple of online facial memory tests.
A weird side effect of this is that over the years I have often recognized people I'd who clearly didn't recognize me. In order to not embarrass them by remembering them when they don't recall me, I've unintentionally adopted the habit of waiting until I see a hint of recognition from others before I respond in kind. Brains are weird.
I also have a bad sense of direction and I had to learn not rely on my intuition/sense and instead to look for landmarks and other cues. Sometimes an area looks familiar but really isn't or I'm actually going the opposite way of where I'm supposed to.
I do that too, but my brain isn't good at rotating large objects in 3D space (small ones are fine). So if I go through a familiar intersection in a different direction, I won't recognize it. Landmarks coming from another direction look different to me. :-/
For me, the core is not that you can't "recognize" a face, it's that it is very very hard to form a memory of a face. It's not in the storage, it's in the retrieval.
For example, if I try to picture a person's face, even someone I know well, it's kind of fuzzy. It is hard to describe, but again, it's more like you can't quite remember a face, more than you can't recognize a face.
So, I put faces together into mini-shapes. Nose-shape, hair-shape, eye-shape, teeth shape (how I recognize Kathereine Heigl), etc. I can't put together a whole face into memory, but I can group these mini-shapes, features, etc. into a "faceprint" of sorts.
The main thing I use though is sound/voice. I can recognize voices to an extremely precise degree, all the time in shows/movies, I can recognize actors in costume, full masks, animated movies, etc. without problem. I am sometimes fooled, actually, by people with similar voices, and I'm always saying "these people sound so much alike they should be cast as twins" to which everyone of course thinks I am crazy.
(Orphan Black is an exception because the lead in that show changes her voice with the different characters so it keeps me guessing).
> For me, the core is not that you can't "recognize" a face, it's that it is very very hard to form a memory of a face. It's not in the storage, it's in the retrieval.
Exactly that. A handful of people I always recognize including team members at work. Actually I had been going to hypnosis sessions one time (not because of that). These sessions are a lot about imagining images/sceneries and during one instance I saw a face of a friend with my inner eye really clearly. That was surreal.
Interesting, I'm not impaired afaik but I don't really remember face characteristic if I don't make an effort, apart from really obvious things of course (couldn't draw the from memory). But I still immediately recognize a face (well most of the time). It's like seeing a color and knowing it's blue, it requires zero effort, you just know. I'm guessing having perfect pitch is something like this, just that it's not that ordinary. It does happen that after a long time you see someone familiar but not recognize them.
I have prosopagnosia. I only learned what to call it about 5 years ago. But it is not total and complete. I recognize faces when I see someone I know where I have seen them before. But if I see someone I know in a new location I have never seen them, I do not initially recognize them. But as soon as they speak to me, and I hear their voice, suddenly I recognize them. One of my earliest memories when I was in elementary school, first grade, is being with my mother at the Kmart. I was upset because I wanted to go home, and she had this long conversation with someone, seemed like almost an hour, which I found excrutiating. I did not know who she was talking to. When we left, I complained, "who was that person?" My mother gasped, "catmistake! [not my real name] That was your homeroom teacher! You see her every morning in school!" I could not believe it. I knew this woman well. I think I may have been in love with her. Just recently, in a gas station I see this guy shaking hands with someone else, not 6 feet away, full view. He looked interesting, but I didn't know him until he walked up to me, "hey catmistake." It was my friend that I was staying with for the previous two months, knew for 20 years, that I had just seen about a half hour before at his house. It is freaky, going from seeing someone as a complete stranger and then suddenly recognizing them. It is difficult to explain the transition. I had balance problems as a child, and fell down the hardwood stairs on my head nearly every day until I figured out how to lean back when stepping forward. So I think it is permanent brain damage causing it. Doesn't get me down, but I have been abused for it, "friends," that are aware of it, know when to expect it, and screwing with me. Jerks.
I learned I had a mild form when I was about 40, though I had symptoms dating back to college. Mine is sort of the inverse of yours: I will see someone, I know for certain that I’m supposed to know who they are, but draw a complete blank. Like the instant of recognition wipes my memory. Only happens with people who I encounter out of whatever the normal place would be. e.g. I ran into a former roommate at an airport. Knew I was supposed to know who she was but drew a complete blank (luckily, as a former roommate she knew I had this problem).
Prosopagnosia plays an interesting part in my favorite game 999 (from the Zero Escape series). It's a great game for anyone who enjoys philosophy, horror and pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo.
32 comments
[ 9.5 ms ] story [ 79.0 ms ] threadWhen we first started dating, I had a beard. The day I shaved it off, we met up for dinner at a restaurant, and I'd sat down while waiting for her. She arrived at the restaurant and scanned for quite a bit and didn't recognize me until I waved.
The brain is quite an interesting thing. If you like these stories, check out Oliver Sacks book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Mistook_His_Wife_f...
The Departed [0] was probably the strongest example as Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Daemon look fairly similar anyway so I was super confused for most of it.
Once I've seen someone 5-6 times it gets easier to recognise them, but it's always awkward if I meet new people in crowded situations and then "lose" them again and have to wait for them to initiate a conversation before I know who I'm supposed to be with.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Departed
I've never been good at following movie plots. It does depend on the plot. "Detective" type plots where a key twist is when someone we've already seen appears in a different and unexpected place while dressed differently are the worst.
Not being able to recognize actors across movies, who plays in what movie is something I've never paid attention to.
Which meant that I didn't realise for years that part of the joke in Austin Powers is that it's the same actor playing all of the roles.
The one that really gets me is when they use photographs in film/tv, a character looks at a photo and you know the rest of the audience knows who it is supposed to be, but I have no freakin idea.
Meeting new people can indeed be tough, especially when the people look very similar and normal. The most difficult/awkward situations I've encountered on the street though. It's then like: wait do I know this person and should I look again? (Or maybe a third time?) So when I'm not feeling exactly super-pumped, I just walk quickly with tunnel-vision. But through the years I've become an expert remembering certain details like hair-cut, the way people move and so on...
Sometimes I wonder whether I should tell people. Actually some really popular people have it, for instance Victoria of Sweden. I read someone else would then sometimes tell her quietly who is present.
... Heh, at least, he said he did..!
He may have maybe thought he saw you a few times but only once (or never) was it actually you. It's a difficult condition.
As someone who has it, you learn to be cautious about "partial matches" where you recognize some elements of someone (backpack, waterbottle, gait, voice, hair style, etc) but aren't 100% sure. It's pretty embarrassing to realize that the person you just started talking to in fact is not your friend but just has the same jacket.
Here's the sentence I liked most in the article though: "Prosopagnosia can't be treated - if neural connections are not established, they can't be created afterwards." That's pretty disheartening.
People do still consider me to be rude and 'stuck-up' when I ignore them in the street - but I can live with that.
The main effect of this is that I am simply uncertain of the identity of those I encounter. A simple change in context, like a change of hair color or meeting somebody in a different setting, is enough to render them anonymous to me. There have been some deeply shameful moments... the researcher in another department who went out of her way to engage with me, until I mistook her for somebody else for an entire elevator ride. The student I ran into downtown who was hurt because his prof couldn't recall basic details of his project - I literally did not know who he was on account of his bike helmet, despite having in him in class not even a day before. Once as a child I backed away in fear from the dinner table when a stranger took my father's seat. All he had done was remove his 1980's mustache.
99% of the time this condition is invisible even to me. A normal work routine ensures that I only meet people in the places I expect them. I would never, ever mistake my wife for a hat. But if she turned up in an unexpected place, I fear I would walk right past her. And if I meet new people in rapid succession, I have almost no hope of recall unless they have conspicuous features like jewelry, tattoos or expressive hair. Art receptions are generally a breeze. Tech conferences are the worst.
Assuming we ever get to work in close quarters again, try guessing at the identity of your co-workers from behind. Almost always you'll be positive whom you're looking at. But not every time. For most people, it would be enough for the subject to turn around and provide a clear view of their face. For those with face blindness, even that may not resolve the ambiguity. Now imagine repeating this exercise at the supermarket, where you cannot expect any particular person to be present, and you can get a sense of the anxiety this condition can cause.
I have such trouble with recognising faces - including knowing I know them - but mistaking them for someone else - that I have to actively check myself before I engage with people who I’m not very familiar with.
So if you know me but don’t see me often, if you bump into me and find the conversation seems awfully generic, sorry about that.
One thing I’ve learned is that a person’s voice is much easier for me to recognise. This means I try to exchange pleasantries - even with people I know well enough that I should recognise them. I hope it comes across as friendly and jovial - which it is - but I also need the interaction to jog my memory.
I and some friends had the funny realization awhile back that the sort of scene where people have colorful hair, tattoos, unusual piercings, etc etc, seems to attract more than its fair share of slightly-face-blind people. Which, on reflection, makes a lot of sense.
A weird side effect of this is that over the years I have often recognized people I'd who clearly didn't recognize me. In order to not embarrass them by remembering them when they don't recall me, I've unintentionally adopted the habit of waiting until I see a hint of recognition from others before I respond in kind. Brains are weird.
I wouldn't mind a bit of what you've got.
For example, if I try to picture a person's face, even someone I know well, it's kind of fuzzy. It is hard to describe, but again, it's more like you can't quite remember a face, more than you can't recognize a face.
So, I put faces together into mini-shapes. Nose-shape, hair-shape, eye-shape, teeth shape (how I recognize Kathereine Heigl), etc. I can't put together a whole face into memory, but I can group these mini-shapes, features, etc. into a "faceprint" of sorts.
The main thing I use though is sound/voice. I can recognize voices to an extremely precise degree, all the time in shows/movies, I can recognize actors in costume, full masks, animated movies, etc. without problem. I am sometimes fooled, actually, by people with similar voices, and I'm always saying "these people sound so much alike they should be cast as twins" to which everyone of course thinks I am crazy.
(Orphan Black is an exception because the lead in that show changes her voice with the different characters so it keeps me guessing).
Exactly that. A handful of people I always recognize including team members at work. Actually I had been going to hypnosis sessions one time (not because of that). These sessions are a lot about imagining images/sceneries and during one instance I saw a face of a friend with my inner eye really clearly. That was surreal.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50550973-liking-what-you...