Face recognition fail

[shagungu]

My congenital prosopagnosia (face blindness) must really be kicking in -- I figure that the people
in the Buckleup meme October banner must be Chris Pine and Karl Urban, but I can't make
my brain recognize them:

http://buckleup-meme.livejournal.com/8433.html

Comments

[shagungu]

Yes -- young adult Caucasian males with medium brown short hair are the worst! I get lost often, both in movies and real life.

I also find it very difficult to adjust when friends or acquaintances make major changes in their hair style or color.

If you're interested, you might like some of the resources linked here:
http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/index.php

I do cognitive neuroscience as my job, and that gives me nice official sounding terms for all the problems I have, like prosopagnosia, and anomia :) There are some people with congenital prosopagnosia who can't recognize their own children or parents -- fortunately, I'm not in that category.

Research has found that there is a lot of normal variation in the population in many skills that previously we assumed that everyone was about the same on, like face recognition. Better appreciation for human diversity.... always a good thing. I know it is something that you appreciate, since your fiction is often exploring diversity and disability/ability issues.

[syredronning]

*reads about anomia* I hope you don't have that very strong, it sounds like something a professor would have a hard time dealing with ♥

[shagungu]

I've always had some trouble with verbal fluency in general, and coming up with the right word in particular. Tied into being shy as well, I expect. As a professor, I make sure I have something caffeinated before I go and lecture -- that really helps :) My shyness has gotten somewhat better as I have grown older, and I think that helps too. I still have times when I get stuck and have a lot of trouble getting the words out, though.

Anomia is a normal part of growing older, and is one of the things that older adults complain about the most. Related to the tip of the tongue phenomena, which some of my memory colleagues are interested in...

Even more frustrating are the paraphasias (word substitutions) -- I can say the completely wrong word and not notice, and my students can get very confused. Sometimes I even write the wrong word and don't notice. A few classic ones: April and August, Cornell and Columbia, vesicle and ventricle.... I've made each of these errors multiple times.