Prosopagnosia
July 12, 2015 9:17 AM   Subscribe

What it's like to be face-blind.

Here are some of the most interesting parts of this interview with an anonymous 47-year-old woman who's been face-blind all her life:
It doesn’t matter if I know the person: I’ve walked right past my husband, my own mother, my daughter, my son, without being able to recognize them.

It can be very embarrassing, and it can offend people. I once had to drop a sociology class, because I told the professor, to her face, that she was a horrible lecturer. I thought I was complaining to a fellow student! It’s as if I have a missing chip — you feel like you’re just not trying hard enough. Faces are so important to humans that we have a special part of our brain dedicated to recognizing them. Most people remember them as a whole piece, but I don’t. . . . Good-looking people are the most difficult to recognize. . . .

The other thing I have discovered is that there is a specific expression people have when they see somebody they know. I call it the “I know you face” — it’s sort of a surprised micro expression. I’m convinced that it’s completely involuntary. It looks a little like surprise. The eyebrows go up, and usually the mouth opens like they're about to say something. When I see it, I say hello, and then when I start interacting with them, I’ll remember who they are. That’s just one of a whole set of observational skills I’ve developed. Another is when I’m meeting somebody in public, I’ll arrive early so they'll approach me.

I'm always looking for visual hooks. My daughter has a particular thing she does with her mouth. If there’s several people who could be her, I look for the mouth thing. If she's nervous, or she's irritated, one side of her mouth goes up. She's done it since she was a baby. She doesn't like having her photograph taken, so when I look at a group photo, I look for the kid with the smirk and I know it’s my daughter. . . .

My son had a distinctive blue and white camouflage hat that he wore for five years. It was great for me when we were in the playground because I could track him. The rule was that my kids had to keep me in their line of sight. If there was a crowd of kids and mine weren’t wearing anything distinctive, I was totally lost. . . .

I’ve had to say to friends of mine, “Is that a picture of me? Who is that?” If I unexpectedly see myself in a mirror, I might think it's somebody else. It's like, Why is that woman staring at me? . . .

When I worked at a homeless shelter, I was often praised for the way I interacted with my African-American clients. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing differently from the other white workers, but I was allowed into their circle and they bonded with me. When we lived in Louisiana, I was always being asked by African-American women if my husband was black. When I was tested at Dartmouth, I scored low on unconscious racism. Apparently babies show a preference for their own race at about nine months because that’s when they start being able to recognize faces. My head doesn’t do this.
Previously, previously, previouslier, and previousliest.
posted by John Cohen (47 comments total) 55 users marked this as a favorite
 
Oliver Sacks on his own case of it.
posted by Dashy at 9:30 AM on July 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


He is mentioned in the beginning of the article.
posted by Kitteh at 9:47 AM on July 12, 2015


There was also an interesting piece on Snap Judgment about face-blindness recently.
posted by likeatoaster at 9:48 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have a family member who experiences this. He keeps track of people by their voices.
posted by oceanjesse at 10:03 AM on July 12, 2015


Fantastic article, so well done, and I love the woman who is the subject -- I would wear a big name tag if we were friends
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 10:08 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Just finished watching the Korean drama 'The Girl Who Could See Smells.' It featured a serial killer with prosopagnosia (he knew who he wanted to kill, but couldn't recognize them!). Also featured the title character who could, you know, see smells, and they went to great lengths to prove it was not synesthesia. Not sure why, like the Pinocchio syndrome drama, they have to invent weird disorders when so many real ones exist, like this one.
posted by jabah at 10:08 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


(sorry for the reflex post. tried to flag myself away but it didn't go)
posted by Dashy at 10:20 AM on July 12, 2015


I call it the “I know you face” — it’s sort of a surprised micro expression. I’m convinced that it’s completely involuntary. It looks a little like surprise. The eyebrows go up, and usually the mouth opens like they're about to say something. When I see it, I say hello, and then when I start interacting with them, I’ll remember who they are.

Yup yup yup. Except when I enthusiastically greet a complete stranger who was actually recognizing somebody behind me.

I also second this bit from the article:

The artist Chuck Close managed his condition through his work — after photographing his larger-than-life portraits, he could remember the person attached to the face: "Once I change the face into a two-dimensional object, I can commit it to memory,” he once told a newspaper.

Just about every mental image I have of people I know—up to and including my parents—comes from photographs I've seen of them. Facebook has been helpful in this regard.

(Which is to say, I'm not as far down the prosopagnosia spectrum as this interviewee, but I'm definitely on it.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 10:27 AM on July 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


The online screening they mention is here (also I think this site has the same or related one, it's a little clearer that you can do it anonymously on this version).
posted by advil at 10:30 AM on July 12, 2015


Profoundly prosopagnosic. As the author describes, it's extremely annoying but you learn ways to cope and compensate for the deficit.
posted by The Zeroth Law at 10:34 AM on July 12, 2015


That was a fascinating read; thanks for posting it.
posted by languagehat at 11:09 AM on July 12, 2015


To tell people apart I have to find a distinguishing feature. And context is huge.

Ugh. My nightmare is running into people from work, outside of work. It's like my brain loses all the cues it has to tell me who I'm talking to.
posted by underflow at 11:18 AM on July 12, 2015 [17 favorites]


Is there a version of this where you can recognize people's faces, but you have no idea what their name is, even the 50th time they've told you?
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 11:23 AM on July 12, 2015 [18 favorites]


What a great article. I'm not as profoundly face-blind as the interviewee, but many of the quotes feel so spot on:

Is that because their faces are symmetrical?
Yes! Straight teeth, noses within regular limits … everything is so … normal! It’s like a flock of chickens.

posted by underflow at 11:23 AM on July 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


Is there a version of this where you can recognize people's faces, but you have no idea what their name is, even the 50th time they've told you?

Anomic aphasia / anomia / nominal aphasia.
posted by Shmuel510 at 11:28 AM on July 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have some amount of this. I'm at the point where I have to narrate movies to myself: things like 'the guy with the beard is married to the woman who's sleeping around' or 'the guy with the thick glasses is the vet' to be able to follow them. By the end of a movie I don't recognize the people who showed up at the beginning.

I just took that quiz - the person I got the fastest was Paul McCartney. I think older people are a lot easier to recognize than younger ones, for one of the reasons mentioned in the article. They just have more distinctive faces.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 11:49 AM on July 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


My friend has this - she blogged about it a few months ago. She's currently taking part in a brain scan study about it which is apparently proving very interesting.
posted by corvine at 12:15 PM on July 12, 2015


still_wears_a_hat: I have the same problem with movies. Someone needs to develop an app that will put name tags on the characters, just like subtitles for the dialog. Wow, watching things would be a lot more enjoyable without constantly straining to figure out (over and over again) who's who. (You're the one with the hat! Please don't take it off...)
posted by Corvid at 12:18 PM on July 12, 2015 [10 favorites]


I'm waiting for the Google Glass app that will put tags on people when I look at them to tell me who they are (and maybe whisper in my ear how I know them).
posted by octothorpe at 12:43 PM on July 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


If I am introduced to two people of roughly similar appearance* at the same time, there's about a 25 percent chance that I will never, ever be able to tell them apart. I'll recognize them forever as BobOrDave. I don't know whether it's neurological, but I'd pay a large sum of money to be rid of it.

* -- Very roughly, as in "Those are both white guys around five-ten, average build, in their thirties."
posted by Etrigan at 12:52 PM on July 12, 2015 [4 favorites]


Does anyone know if anyone has ever recreated the "Stones" analogy about prosopagnosia? It used to be on prosopagnosia.com and I can still find links to it, but the site is dead. It was really wonderful.
posted by Michele in California at 1:18 PM on July 12, 2015




Dang. My browser is choking. But thank you for that. I will see if I can pull it up sometime on a different device.
posted by Michele in California at 1:45 PM on July 12, 2015


I call it the “I know you face” — it’s sort of a surprised micro expression. I’m convinced that it’s completely involuntary. It looks a little like surprise. The eyebrows go up, and usually the mouth opens like they're about to say something. When I see it, I say hello, and then when I start interacting with them, I’ll remember who they are.

Yes! It's very like the look a dog gets when it sees something interesting.
posted by winna at 2:22 PM on July 12, 2015


My nightmare is running into people from work, outside of work. It's like my brain loses all the cues it has to tell me who I'm talking to.

My single Most Embarrassing Incident Ever was after half my department got suddenly laid off. A few weeks later, I run into somebody at a nearby bookstore who recognizes me, and asks how things have been. While I'm trying to figure out who he is (probably a former grad school classmate, I think, but at least half my mental bandwidth is occupied with trying to narrow it down), I start explaining that there had been a general bloodbath at work... and I don't remember exactly how far into this I get before he stops me, but you can guess where this story is going. Before he was laid off, his cubicle had been just a few steps from mine.
posted by Shmuel510 at 3:02 PM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oliver Sachs? Really? They failed to mention this detail in Awakenings.
posted by jwhite1979 at 3:28 PM on July 12, 2015


Or, at a professional conference with band playing loudly: person and I are schmoozing, (she realizes I don't recognize her), shouts into my ear but I can't hear her, I shrug pleasantly and signal "can't hear." She is my boss's best friend, as it turns out: unforgiven.
posted by mmiddle at 3:33 PM on July 12, 2015


Quoting myself from an unrelated thread a few years ago:
I am incredibly bad at recognising faces, and pretty bad at recognising people generally. Most of my ability to recognise people is based on their voice, followed by a mix of haircut/mannerisms/clothing/gait. The upshot of this is that I'm very accustomed to meeting apparent strangers and working out who they are just after we start chatting. It's not that hard: most people who already know each other don't actually use names that much, and talking about the present instead of the past avoids most other pitfalls. I've spent most of my life practicing this skill, and think I mostly get away with it, at least until I get the cues I need to recognise them.

Anyway, one day about five years ago I was walking East along High Holborn to meet some friends, when I notice that I'm being looked at by a woman my age, who's walking toward me. Could be nothing, could be someone who I'm supposed to know, so I look away for a couple of seconds and look back: eye contact again. I slow down fractionally, look away, look back with a slight smile: she's still looking at me, has slowed slightly, and is smiling in recognition. We repeat this pattern together, until we're standing face to face, grinning at each other, about a foot apart. In silence.

About ten seconds pass, which doesn't sound like much but I swear I felt most of an ice age slide past. I offer "Hey, it's great to see you again!" and the conversation gets rolling. It is indeed far too long since we last saw each other, life is going well for us both since university, I'm studying X subject in the Y institute, her new job is in Z bank, and my girlfriend ("of course, how is she?") is having fun up north. All the while, I'm wracking my brain to place her: she could be the roommate of a friend of mine from undergrad, the accent, build and haircut are about right. After a few minutes of catching up, I realise that I'm running late to meet my friends, make my excuses ("yes, send me an email, we should meet up properly!") and carry on up the street. Replaying the conversation in my head to convince myself that it really was Michelle, it dawns on me that in the entire conversation, neither of us mentioned our own or each other's names, anyone else's name from the past that we might both know, or from which uni we know each other.

To this day, I have no idea whether I spent a few pleasant minutes catching up with my university friend's old roommate, or if some woman who's bad with faces has spent the last few years telling her friends exactly the same story, about some guy she couldn't quite recognise, who she met when walking West along High Holborn.
posted by metaBugs at 3:42 PM on July 12, 2015 [14 favorites]


I can recognise people whom I know well, or have seen repeatedly (and recently), though am terrible with faces of people I have only met a few times. Context helps; recognising a coworker from a different department at a gig would be harder than recognising someone I know from going to gigs at a gig. Not sure if this is a mild/subclinical prosopagnosia or just being rubbish with faces.
posted by acb at 4:01 PM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm not bad at faces, but I'm decidedly not good. And whether blessing or curse I'm quite physically distinctive. So during an era when I was a picocelebrity, I was greeted by "strangers" all the time. Names? That's so bad that it was six months before I could reliably refer to my roommate Jon without being prompted with his name.
posted by wotsac at 5:15 PM on July 12, 2015


I'm not completely face-blind, but pretty bad at recognizing faces. It can be hard to follow movies and TV shows. And as far as race goes, I think it makes it worse for me -- I'm always worried I'm going to make some face-blindness-related gaffe that gets mistaken for "those people all look alike."

When I was about 5 or 6, I got separated from my mom at the zoo. When I finally found her, I told her that she might just be some woman who looked like my mom. I couldn't trust my ability to recognize her for sure.

My mom and I, and other relatives on her side of the family, have strange feet. She took off her shoes, showed me her foot, and said, "See, I have the [long Slavic name][weird foot characteristic]."

I figured that an impostor might have feet like that, but it was pretty unlikely that she'd know what to call the trait, so I was probably safe.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 5:21 PM on July 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


I seem to have the opposite problem regarding movie and TV actors - that is, I might have seen a certain face in some obscure horror movie and years later I'll recognize them in another movie where they're playing the comic sidekick. Often that moment of recognition is jarring and can take me out of whatever it is I'm watching. It can also make watching movies with me rather annoying ("Hey wasn't he/she ... in ...?"). Unless I am watching with one of my brothers who shares this trait, which then makes things doubly annoying for the people around us. (I scored 100% on one of the facial recognition tests linked above.)

On the other hand I'm not great at recognizing faces in a crowd actually in front of me, and not on a screen.
posted by needled at 5:34 PM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm about half face-blind. I got 100% on that online quiz, when faces are so overexposed that I've seen them a thousand times I have no trouble. But I have trouble with acquaintances and even close friends sometimes.

When I watch a movie I have no idea which of the short dark-haired men is which and which of the blonde women is which until about halfway through, unless I know the actors already.

I compensate by recognizing voices and gaits pretty well. So about 50% of murder mystery shows are ruined because they show the murderer walking around, being careful to never show their face, but include their voice. As soon as that actor says something later in the show I know they did it...
posted by mmoncur at 5:35 PM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Slomo "do what you want"
posted by hortense at 6:50 PM on July 12, 2015


Wow, the online test someone linked above was super-hard. There were all these people who looked vaguely familiar, but without their hair...no idea. You'd think I'd recognize Obama, but no, just Donald Trump. I don't think I got any of the women right at all, and only like three or four of the men. And I usually think of myself as someone who's pretty good at recognizing people. (Although admittedly, it's always hard when the kid who's been wearing a hat all semester suddenly stops wearing it. Luckily, students usually sit in the same spots from day to day.)
posted by leahwrenn at 8:52 PM on July 12, 2015


I'm glad to have read this article because I will admit I get suuuuper offended when people don't remember me; I take it as a slight (my own self-esteem issues, but there you have it). It doesn't help that I myself am very good at recognizing and remembering faces. I actually wasn't aware there was such a phenomenon as face-blindness and that it's apparently relatively common; now that I know about it, I won't take it quite so ill when someone doesn't recognize me even though I've been sitting in the same seminar with them all week or what have you.
posted by holborne at 9:19 PM on July 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I did the screening test advil linked to a few years ago and got less than half. I've been working on face recognition consciously for about ten years and am delighted to report that I just took it and got a perfect score. I literally would not have believed it was possible. I remember taking it and being baffled by the impossibility of the task. A few times I remember laughing at the idea that anyone could be expected to figure out who these people were without additional cues.

Not going to say that people with more severe faceblindness will be able to compensate with other tactics, but it's really satisfying to me to know that my work on noticing and recalling memorable features paid off. It's become second nature. I got Condoleezza Rice from her teeth alone.

This makes me want to try watching The Godfather again to see if I can follow it now.
posted by town of cats at 9:46 PM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


To tell people apart I have to find a distinguishing feature. And context is huge. This is a big thing for me too.

I usually start out by choosing a distinguishing feature, and draw a picture of that person. I just started a new job, and here's how I remember some of the people I'll be working with:

-Wears heels lots, her two front teeth meet together.
-Brown, poofy hair with blond highlights (this one was hard)
-Glasses and short brown hair, jingles when she walks

If they change too much after I first meet them, I have to start all over again.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 2:21 AM on July 13, 2015


I have a degree of this, probably not helped by the fact that many of the strategies I developed are race-specific to some degree. I grew up in Hong Kong, and despite having lived my entire adult life in the UK, I still can't tell people apart in films without great effort (if at all) unless we're watching Chinese films, where I have no trouble while everyone else is complaining that they're confused about who's who.

If I meet people outside of context, I do not recognise them, to the point that I've told people I would consider friends from a regular gig night to fuck off, I don't know them when I bumped into them and they stayed trying to talk to me in a park in a different town. Despite the.familiarity with which they were treating me, I was convinced I'd never seen any of them before.
posted by Dysk at 3:20 AM on July 13, 2015


Actual conversation I have had with my girlfriend:

"She was talking to those two guys. I think they were brothers?"
"You mean those two identical twins?"

I could see them both and I had no idea.
posted by catalytics at 6:57 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


On a related note, there were identical twins in my elementary school class, and I was one of the few people who could reliably tell them apart. I didn't make the connection to my prosopagnosia until recently, but I now suspect that this is because—not getting whatever holistic summary of their features most people had—I was recognizing them by their freckles, which differed.
posted by Shmuel510 at 9:12 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow, prosopagnosia is fascinating. I'd be curious to see what kind of prevalence it's got. One research firm estimates 1% of people.

I'm so curious about, like, the mechanics of not recognizing a face... what does one see and not see? I wonder if trying to describe face-blindness to me is like me trying to describe color to somebody without sight.

And yet I've also occasionally had the complete inability to recognize somebody if I see them out of context. But that's quite different from face-blindness, even if the in-moment manifestation is similar.
posted by entropone at 9:38 AM on July 13, 2015


The hardest part for me is not recognizing family members.

When my kids were in daycare it was difficult. I would stop in the doorway and scan all the moppets looking for the outfit I had memorized that morning when I put it on the kid. But little kids tend to spill things and they kept a washer and dryer at the day care and spare loaner kids. If the kid made a beeline for me it was almost a certain thing. This was hard because I was pretty sure I could never convince the day care workers that I was a fit mother when if someone had lied to me I could have been fooled into taking the wrong kid home.

Once my spouse of more than a decade showed up at midnight to pick me after work in the wrong car. I didn't recognize him although he sat there smiling and gesturing at me. I certainly wasn't going to go up to some stranger's car in a deserted parking lot. I mean, a guy trying to coax you into his car at midnight is not a guy you want to get near. The reason why this is memorable is because he was there to pick me AND a co-worker who had never met him up, so she was standing beside me as it slowly clued into me that the annoying dude might just be my spouse... After that my spouse finally understood how face blind I am too.
posted by Jane the Brown at 11:27 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


I seem to have the opposite problem regarding movie and TV actors - that is, I might have seen a certain face in some obscure horror movie and years later I'll recognize them in another movie where they're playing the comic sidekick. Often that moment of recognition is jarring and can take me out of whatever it is I'm watching.

Yeah, it's interesting to have a kind of superrecognition for faces (I got 18 out of 20 on the test above, partly 'cause TIL that JFK Jr. looks a lot like Antonio Banderas) and picking actors out of random roles all the time... yet have a weird kind of anomia when it comes to my partner's friends.
posted by psoas at 11:46 AM on July 13, 2015


I can see all the bits and pieces- nose, eyes, colours of things, odd bumps, but for some reason, it just does not gell into a coherent picture. From about 15+ feet away, people tend to fall into descriptions like 'white, brown hair, short, attractive' and at about 10 feet I start to be able to notice enough details to sort out 'oh, co-worker (little scar above the lip)' or 'oh, my wife (that bump there by her eye)'

My mother, however, changed her haircut for the first time in 20 years.... and I probably would have keep over-looking her despite looking specifically for her :(

On the very rare occasions when I've been forced to admit to the condition (And I suspect I have a moderate-at-worst case) I find that acknowledging that I can't recognize them, but I have not in fact forgotten who they are, and what we did together or where I know them from tends to go a long way to soothing hurt feelings.
posted by Jacen at 1:45 PM on July 14, 2015


"She was talking to those two guys. I think they were brothers?"
"You mean those two identical twins?"


I've had this *exact* conversation with my wife.

I'm so curious about, like, the mechanics of not recognizing a face... what does one see and not see? I wonder if trying to describe face-blindness to me is like me trying to describe color to somebody without sight.

Actually it's easy to describe to you. Go look at a row of teddy bears for sale at a toy store. Can you tell them apart? Of course you can. Some of them are brown, some are pandas, some are wearing hats. You can even tell the "identical" brown bears apart if you look closely, some have tags and others don't, some have a bit of fur missing here or there, some have their arms bent in a different way than others.

Now try the same thing with, for instance, penguins at the zoo, or a flock of pigeons. Can you tell them apart? Yes, if you look carefully they have features that differ. Sometimes it's hard because they keep moving around.

To re-use an excellent analogy mentioned above, now try it with a few rocks from your local playground or gravel pit. Look at each one closely and you notice unique patterns that differentiate them.

If you spend enough time with them, watching closely -- for example if you work with the penguins at the zoo, or if you collect rocks -- you gain an "intuitive" grasp of how each one looks. You can look at one and instantly tell which one it is. It's like* you have a picture in your head. But this is hard, and it only happens if you study them intensely for a long time.

Now, finally, try it with a group of people. "Why bother," you say, "I can already tell them apart."

For me, the process with teddy bears or penguins or rocks or people is exactly the same. If I want to differentiate people I have to concentrate on features, and if I want to be good at it I have to study for a while. Just like Chuck Close -- mentioned above -- can recognize a face after he spends many hours making a giant portrait of it.

It's easier in groups of people with lots of diversity -- race, gender, hairstyles. On the other hand, in some situations -- i.e. a typical technology office where there are 100 20-something white guys with short business haircuts -- it's EXACTLY like dealing with penguins.

For you, I presume, there's some "magic" that happens when you see a face that makes them way easier to tell apart than penguins or rocks. I just don't have that. It's different from the "intuition" or "picture in your head" I mentioned earlier -- it's specifically for faces. I can spot a Lamborghini instantly and tell you which model it is, but that's because there are fewer car models than people and I've studied most of the cars.

* For some people it literally IS a picture in their head. I don't have the ability to visualize. But that's a whole other thread...
posted by mmoncur at 5:03 PM on July 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't think I technically have face-blindness? That online quiz, I was able to get most of them right off the bat. I do, however, have lots of trouble remembering or describing faces (let alone names).

I got 100% on that quiz, but I think it's because all of those faces were constantly shown in 2D pictures in newspapers and TV during a time I was paying lots of attention. In fact, i specifically remember studying a couple of those faces (Princess Diana, Paul McCartney) after a situation where someone was shocked that I didn't recognize that person.

If they made the same quiz with current pop stars and actors, I think I'd have lots more trouble. I've seen them all a few times, but I'm not spending hours every day looking at their pictures.

As in, I am struggling to picture the face of my best friend of over a decade. I think he has brown hair. He is symmetrical. I do not know what color his eyes are. But if you stuck him in front of a line-up, I'd probably be able to identify him. (This means I should never be called in to help with a police sketcher.)

See also aphantasia. I don't have "pictures in my head" at all, and some people are better at visualizing than others. Curiously this does *not* always correlate with face blindness, and also doesn't stop me from "intuitively" recognizing objects i've studied (cars, species of birds, etc.)
posted by mmoncur at 5:09 PM on July 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


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