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
  • I am terrible at faces, on a few occasions I have actually failed to notice that we changed lecturer and when I first go to a new uni it takes me several months to start being able to tell similarish looking people apart. I've never tested whether I have true prosopagnosia, and I don't think I do because I do start to get there eventually, but it is definitely something that is a struggle for me

Reply
  • I am terrible at faces, on a few occasions I have actually failed to notice that we changed lecturer and when I first go to a new uni it takes me several months to start being able to tell similarish looking people apart. I've never tested whether I have true prosopagnosia, and I don't think I do because I do start to get there eventually, but it is definitely something that is a struggle for me

Children
No Data