Face blindness - Prosopagnosia
There's a fascinating article in Wired about face blindness (or as it is properly known, prosopagnosia). I was particularly suprised by how common they are now finding developmental face blindness, people who have never been able to identify faces but we just written off as shy. The article suggests that as much as 2% of the population may suffer from prosopagnosia.
I'm tempted to say that I can relate to this, but not really all that much. I have trouble remembering faces, not recognizing faces. That is, if I see someone I know, I'll know I know them and I may recall their name (my memory for names is bad, but bad within a standard deviation I think). But I have great difficulty imagining someone's face, even my own. I don't have too much of a concept of what I look like and often I have trouble imaging what other people look like that I know. Anyway, it's an interesting read that really made me think about how I see the world.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/blind.html
http://www.faceblind.org/
I'm tempted to say that I can relate to this, but not really all that much. I have trouble remembering faces, not recognizing faces. That is, if I see someone I know, I'll know I know them and I may recall their name (my memory for names is bad, but bad within a standard deviation I think). But I have great difficulty imagining someone's face, even my own. I don't have too much of a concept of what I look like and often I have trouble imaging what other people look like that I know. Anyway, it's an interesting read that really made me think about how I see the world.
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/blind.html
http://www.faceblind.org/