FACE BLINDNESS

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Just realized I have what Brad Pitt says he has. It’s called Prosopagnosia & the Daily Mail has a big article from which I copied these questions. I feel better now I know there is such a thing.

The very last one - no. 20 - is what I have. It’s so bad sometimes that people have to tell me who they are. On at least 2 occasions I have interacted with a woman who knows me, but, to this day, I have no clue who she was. Two separate women & I still wonder who they were.

This is so embarrassing! So tired of saying “Sorry, do I know you?”. A woman recognized me yesterday after many years of not seeing me. I had absolutely no clue who she was, but, when she explained how we knew each other, I did remember her. She was thrilled to see me again she said, but, to me, it was another embarrassment.

DO YOU HAVE FACE BLINDNESS? TAKE THE TEST TO FIND OUT
The following statements inquire about your face recognition abilities.

For each item, indicate how much you agree or disagree by choosing the appropriate numbered response on a scale of one to five.

One represents you strongly agree while five represents you strongly disagree.

Read each item carefully before responding and answer as honestly as possible.

1. My face recognition ability is worse than most people

2. I have always had a bad memory for faces

3. I find it noticeably easier to recognise people who have distinctive facial features

4. I often mistake people I have met before for strangers

5. When I was at school I struggled to recognise my classmates

6. When people change their hairstyle, or wear hats, I have problems recognising them

7. I sometimes have to warn new people I meet that I am 'bad with faces'

8. I find it easy to picture individual faces in my mind

9. I am better than most people at putting a 'name to a face'

10. Without hearing people's voices I struggle to recognise them

11. Anxiety about face recognition has led me to avoid social or professional situations

12. I have to try harder than other people to memorise faces

13. I am very confident in my ability to recognise myself in photographs

14. I sometimes find movies hard to follow because of difficulties recognising characters

15. My friends and family think I have bad face recognition or bad face memory

16. I feel like I frequently offend people by not recognising who they are

17. It is easy for me to recognise individuals in situations that require people to wear similar clothes (e.g. suits, uniforms, swimwear)

18. At family gatherings I sometimes confuse individual family members

19. I find it easy to recognise celebrities in 'before-they-were-famous' pictures, even if they have changed considerably

20. It is hard to recognise familiar people when I meet them out of context (e.g. meeting a work colleague unexpectedly while shopping).
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I wonder if Face Blindness is actually a symptom of Short Term Memory Loss
https://mysimplysmarter.com/blog/com...m-memory-loss/

Myself I never forget a face. I actual can spot an actor I've seen only a couple times and years ago in movie I'm watching...and get this I've been able to spot them only from the back of their heads. Now place names-I suck at that, I don't care to remember place names and so I never do.



I wonder if Face Blindness is actually a symptom of Short Term Memory Loss
https://mysimplysmarter.com/blog/com...m-memory-loss/

Myself I never forget a face. I actual can spot an actor I've seen only a couple times and years ago in movie I'm watching...and get this I've been able to spot them only from the back of their heads. Now place names-I suck at that, I don't care to remember place names and so I never do.
Weirdly, I am BRILLIANT in spotting movie faces exactly like you do.

Place names I think I’m ok with. But dates on when I actually did something need to be written down since I have no conception of time.



Weirdly, I am BRILLIANT in spotting movie faces exactly like you do.

Place names I think I’m ok with. But dates on when I actually did something need to be written down since I have no conception of time.
Wow, that's interesting that you can spot movie faces well, but not people. Maybe it's just that you're not really interested in the people you meet casually so don't bother to pay a lot of attention to their faces and so don't remember them when you see them.



Wow, that's interesting that you can spot movie faces well, but not people. Maybe it's just that you're not really interested in the people you meet casually so don't bother to pay a lot of attention to their faces and so don't remember them when you see them.
I find a lot of people look the same. One woman I’ve known for years, but rarely see, has a very bland white face with no distinguishing features. Whenever I meet her in a store or out walking she has to tell me who she is.

This “blindness” has only come up I think in the last decade. Though I have nothing as described in the link you sent.



Fascinating. I remember seeing a medical show a long time ago and a guy had a form of face blindness that was of such a severe type that he could see everything else fine, but faces appeared to him as a blurry hole in space!

(They explained that part of his brain could not formulate the parts of a face into a form his mind could process, so his brain would just blank them out completely.)

I think I have something opposite - I pick up slight genetic markers on people that others usually can't readily see. I always think people look like someone famous but it's for reasons like the space between their nose & mouth, the angle of their forehead when viewed from the side, the differential between their sideburn and their nose, or the way their one eye curves down.

Other people sometimes think I'm crazy when I say someone has Shirley Temple's mouth. (They're like... I have no idea what Shirley Temple's mouth looks like.) Or I'll say, that short, blond guy over looks nothing like him, but he's got the exact same eye lids as Robert Mitchum! (And they're like, "Who's Robert Mitchum?")



I used to volunteer with a really nice guy at church. He was the chief engineer there.

First time I saw him post-volunteering he was driving his truck accompanied by the church organist’s female assistant. He stopped traffic for me to cross, but he was confused that I didn’t acknowledge him. Finally he shouted out “Hi, it’s Jim from church & this is Marian!”. What’s worse is last summer we met on the church steps & he immediately said “Hi, it’s Jim from church!” even though this time I knew it was him because we were outside the church where I knew him from.

It’s seeing people “out of context” that confuses me.



Slightly off-topic, but there was a guy in a shop I'd frequent who I thought looked like Freddie Mercury. He even had the slightly protruding front teeth - not as severe as Mercury, but combined with his thin face, thin nose and short dark hair, he looked a lot like Mercury. Thing is it never felt right to tell him because you don't know how people will react or if they have any particular feelings toward the person you think they look like (they might take it as an insult).



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
I don't think I have face blindness. I think that I just have a bad memory. I usually recognize people, but a lot of times I just won't remember their name. My neighbors wave to me all the time, and I wave back, but I don't remember most of their names.

Even in movies, I'll recognize an actor, but unless it's someone that I've seen many times before, I won't remember who they are or what I've seen them in before. I can usually figure out who they are by looking up the movie on IMDB, and then figure out what I've seen them in by looking through their credits.
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Slightly off-topic, but there was a guy in a shop I'd frequent who I thought looked like Freddie Mercury. He even had the slightly protruding front teeth - not as severe as Mercury, but combined with his thin face, thin nose and short dark hair, he looked a lot like Mercury. Thing is it never felt right to tell him because you don't know how people will react or if they have any particular feelings toward the person you think they look like (they might take it as an insult).
Good call.

I don't think I have face blindness. I think that I just have a bad memory. I usually recognize people, but a lot of times I just won't remember their name. My neighbors wave to me all the time, and I wave back, but I don't remember most of their names.

Even in movies, I'll recognize an actor, but unless it's someone that I've seen many times before, I won't remember who they are or what I've seen them in before. I can usually figure out who they are by looking up the movie on IMDB, and then figure out what I've seen them in by looking through their credits.
I’m not too bad at names. As long as I address the person by their name as soon as we meet & say it aloud a few times, I remember it. Sometimes I need the name spelled so that I can mentally visualize it. If I can’t picture the name as spelled, I won’t remember it.



Slightly off-topic, but there was a guy in a shop I'd frequent who I thought looked like Freddie Mercury. He even had the slightly protruding front teeth - not as severe as Mercury, but combined with his thin face, thin nose and short dark hair, he looked a lot like Mercury. Thing is it never felt right to tell him because you don't know how people will react or if they have any particular feelings toward the person you think they look like (they might take it as an insult).
As an addendum to this story, I once mentioned to another guy working in that shop the Freddie Mercury resemblance. It went something like this...

Me: So, do you think your boss looks anything like Freddie Mercury?
Guy: Freddie Mercury? The rock-and-roll guy?
Me: Yeah. Freddie Mercury of Queen.
Guy: Oh yeah! Queen! They were from your day, right?
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
Guy: No. He looks nothing like Freddie Mercury, at least not to me.
Me: You don't think so? I mean the shape of the face, the nose, the teeth, the hair - at least from when Freddie Mercury had short hair and no mustache?
Guy: Freddie Mercury... Freddie Mercury... what did HE look like?




As an addendum to this story, I once mentioned to another guy working in that shop the Freddie Mercury resemblance. It went something like this...

Me: So, do you think your boss looks anything like Freddie Mercury?
Guy: Freddie Mercury? The rock-and-roll guy?
Me: Yeah. Freddie Mercury of Queen.
Guy: Oh yeah! Queen! They were from your day, right?
Me: Yeah, pretty much.
Guy: No. He looks nothing like Freddie Mercury, at least not to me.
Me: You don't think so? I mean the shape of the face, the nose, the teeth, the hair - at least from when Freddie Mercury had short hair and no mustache?
Guy: Freddie Mercury... Freddie Mercury... what did HE look like?

At least he didn’t say “Freddie? Freddie who?”



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
Nothing makes you feel older than a middle aged guy (maybe in his 40's) asking you if a rock band was from "your day"?

You really feel old when you find out that the kid you babysat for when he was in first grade has already graduated from college, and he has kids of his own now.