Faceblindness?

Oh yes, I am terrible for this. People who I see out of context I am likely to blank completely. Anyone who changes their hair, or the kind of thing they habitually wear, same, I wouldn't register it was them.

Like you, I rely heavily on indications from the other person that they know who I am, then have to hope that when they start talking, they give themselves away by mentioning people or something that connects them to a certain place. The best one I ever had was a bloke in a pub giving me the very obvious "why are you not acknowledging me" look, who did, to be fair, look vaguely familiar. The only thing that came into my mind was an association with bikes (I am a biker). In the end I got so frustrated, I went up to his table, explained my disastrous facial recognition skills, and asked him who he was. He looked at me with such amazement, then said "this morning???? you spent 3 hrs in my office having a meeting with me!!". I recalled a big fat zero about his face, despite having looked at him for 3hr straight, the only thing that stuck was as I walked in, I saw a crash helmet on a cabinet and said oh, you're a biker too!

It's a bit of a nightmare for film watching too. If a new character who is say a middle-aged bloke with dark hair is introduced in a scene, then in another scene a few minutes later another middle aged bloke with dark hair walks in, I often don't know if it's the same one or another new character, and have to ask my better half. He's used to this now, so doesn't get annoyed with me!

I have done some interesting experiments on myself with this. I can recognize my mother, but I can't call up a picture of her in my head. So I can't really say I know exactly what she looks like. Likewise my own face, I know it's me when it's reflected back in the mirror, but I have no real concept of what I look like, and I can't call up an image of my own face either, which is pretty weird really.

It's called prosopagnosia, by the way, and it is apparently more common in people with ASD than in the general population.

I saw an interesting article once which compared the way people with the condition looked at a photo which had 2 people in it, one facing the camera and one facing away. The researchers used eye following software to see where people looked when shown the image. The "normal" all looked at the face of the person facing the camera, then at the back of the head of the facing away person, then did a rough scan of the background. People like us just looked at the middle of the photo, then did a quick scan around. The faces didn't warrant any special processing. Plastic's comments are actually pretty close to their findings. Other people have special software, just for faces, that is quite specialized. We just use what we have for "general objects" which is not specialized at all ..... so it's just another thing, and one we forget quite quickly at that!

But one odd thing is that i can identify every car, train, aircraft etc.ever made - I suspect it's because they are solid & never change - people have the habit of changing their hair colour & style, make-up, glasses, clothes, posture, facial expressions etc. There's nothing solid to be able to memorise them.

Me too - I could recognise a Dell'orto pumper carburettor at 20 paces, and when I was a kid I was obsessed for a while with being able to identify every car by its tail lights alone. 

The solidity idea is interesting, but I am not sure it explains why faces are just fuzz - and I completely agree, that's what they are like for me too. About the only time I can get a brief flash of what someone's face looks like though is when I can picture their expressions..... and expressions are movable. My mum, and my partner's mum, both have some expressions that are very specific to them, and whilst I can't picture either of their faces, if I try to picture the expression, I get (for a few fleeting seconds only) most of the face. Strange but true :-)

I suspect it has something to do with us missing the specific software for face processing. I read some other research that said "normal" people often have difficulty processing an image of a face if it's presented to them upside down, whereas with any other object it makes little difference which way up it is. When the same test is done with a subject with prosopagnosia, the orientation of the image makes far less difference. We take longer to process it whichever way up it is, and tend to sequentially process the individual features rather than look at the face as a whole.

We have a printout of all the staff at work and it's invaluable when I'm stuck on what someone looks like!
I can memorise a person's most distinctive features from a photo, but if you change the feature I've picked to recognise you with I am lost again. ^^'

moggsy said:

And if it's a good enough likeness I can then just about recognise the person? This might somehow fit with the cartoon theory I guess ...

Yes - I can recognise people in photos - but I can't link the picture to the real person stood in front of me - unless they wear the same clothes and the same pose as the pic..

moggsy said:

And if it's a good enough likeness I can then just about recognise the person? This might somehow fit with the cartoon theory I guess ...

Yes - I can recognise people in photos - but I can't link the picture to the real person stood in front of me - unless they wear the same clothes and the same pose as the pic..