Why Can't Some People Recognise Faces? (prosopagnosia)

BBC Sounds - CrowdScience (you can listen now, or download an audio file) 26 minutes programme about face blindness / difficulty  recognising faces -- experienced by 2% of the population (could there be a reason why more than a third of CrowdScience presenters experience face blindness?).

[I was interested in this programme as:

a) I once read, somewhere, that approximately 36% of Autistic adults experience face blindness,

b) I was interested to hear information from Professor Zaira Cattaneo, a neuroscientist based in Italy who researches face perception],

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct8k6t

A related paper:

Autistic adults have insight into their relative face recognition ability

Gehdu, B.K., Press, C., Gray, K.L.H. et al. Autistic adults have insight into their relative face recognition ability. Sci Rep 14, 17802 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-67649-8

Keywords: Face recognition, Twenty-item prosopagnosia index, Autism, Developmental prosopagnosia

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-67649-8

[While I don't think I have difficulty recognising people's faces, I realise some neurodivergent people do experience prosopagnosia and I was keen to better understand and be aware of what this means for their daily adult lives].

Parents Reply
  • Same for me (I try to get people to tell me an unusual thing - niche hobby - off the beaten track holiday location - unusual claim to fame etc. ...in the hopes that little information nugget will act as a hook to reinforce my mind's filing system of "person" cross matched to "name").  It is not failure-proof - can help though.

Children
  • I'm the same, I can recognise faces but forget names unless I see them written down or with some effort.

    Sometimes people say an actors name, but I need to know what movie they've been in to know who they are talking about. (I'm not a big movie person so have to name one I have seen).

    I'm still reading the article, it's really interesting about possible implications, I think I'll listen to the show so thanks for that!