Traits are very confusing....

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Also - if people do not know that something exists than that would effect their perception of what they are experiencing. For instance - I often thought it must be true that I was not paying attention enough or that I was stupid - even though academically I was very smart.



This to me is very descriptive - Sometimes I have a hard time placing people outside of their anticipated setting. For example - recently I almost made a complete idiot out of myself at my daughter's birthday party when a lady came up to us after the party in a waitress type outfit. We had the party at a restaurant/hall and it had just finished and were in the process of getting everything together so I THOUGHT maybe she was one of the workers. She was my husband's COUSIN and she had come late because she couldn't get off work on time but wanted to stop by.

I also have had a short conversation in a store with my neighbor from across the street without having any clue who she was until after she walked away. She didn't say enough words for me to recognize her voice so I had to ask my daughter who she was after.

The best one though was when we lived in an apartment and I looked outside the window to see who the guy was who was walking around in front - it was my husband I recognized him but it took a few seconds and I had to laugh about that.

That's true of something like colorblindness, where one thing (such as the color blue) looks exactly like something else (such as the color grey). They person might believe that "blue" and "grey" were just very similar colors.

Prosopagnosia is different in that you KNOW everyone has a face that everyone else can see. People talk about it all the time. You head "Oh she has such a pretty face" or "He looks just like his father in the lower part of his face." You see people on TV and in movies giving descriptions of criminals to the cops. Sometimes you see sketch artists making sketches based off of the description and showing it to the person to make sure it looks like that person. It's really hard to escape understanding that people have faces.



You say that I'm wrong and that you would never fail to recognize someone in your family and then tell a story where you thought someone was a family member and they weren't. You just contradicted yourself in your own post.

Yes, we all develop secondary identifiers, but there are a million times when one of the identifiers changes or isn't available to us (i.e. they cut their hair, they hurt their leg and are now walking differently, they are sick and so their voice doesn't sound right) and in those situations you will fail to identify a person whom you know well. If you never or almost never have an experience where you fail to identify someone whom you know well, then you probably don't have prosopagnosia.

Does prosopagnosia mean not being able to see a face though? Or is it just not being able to recognize a face and have difficulty attaching a name or identity to a person. Also I think it could be like any other trait - some people are only specifically colorblind and some people are completely colorblind but that is very rare. I guess it could also be debateable as to whether it is a spectrum issue or that some facial perceptions on the spectrum are impaired but not necessarily a true prosopagnosia.

People with prosopagnosia can still see faces, but not hold them in memory.

There is a research project currently underway at Harvard and University College London. THere is info, and a brief screening test here: http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/facetests/

There are varying degrees of prosopagnosia, and people with it may not be aware they have it, they may just think "oh, I'm terrible at recognising people" without realising it is a recognised condition.

[quote="Mnemosyne]You say that I'm wrong and that you would never fail to recognize someone in your family and then tell a story where you thought someone was a family member and they weren't. You just contradicted yourself in your own post.[/quote]

I agree it seems that way, but I said I would not fail to recognise my immediate family. An aunt, even one I've known my whole life, is hardly that.

The problem with the current definitions of Prosopagnosia is that the vast majority of the literature is based on brain damage studies where the person has suffered some sort of head trauma or a stroke and has lost the ability to recognize even those who are most close to them without having some other identifying characteristics to guide them by.

Developmental Prosopagnosia (i.e., prosopagnosia related to a developmental profile) is sorely understudied but can actually occur on a spectrum where a variety of severities can be seen. The most severe of course being the inability to recognize anybody by face alone. The lesser variants are where the person simply has difficulty recognizing people by face, especially if they do not know them well.

(Although it seems possible, maybe probable, that a spectrum occurs within the head trauma group as well but that the signs may be so subtle that they go unrecognized by diagnosticians, and therefore don't "exist" in the literature. Maybe only the most severe are ever recognized.)

So it seems everyone's right on this thread in some respects. The classic Prosopagnosia has most commonly been diagnosed where the person has a complete inability to recognize anyone by their face alone. Developmental Prosopagnosia can take a wider variety and occur in a spectrum form. This Prosopagnosic Spectrum is often seen within the Autistic Spectrum. Although not all auties, including myself, have facial recognition problems; I am quite the opposite and have yet to meet someone who is better at recognizing faces as I am.

Norah, it is possible that some facial recognition difficulties that you might have may be better accounted for by your perceptual abnormalities brought on by the strabismus. The main thing would be to notice if you have recognition difficulties in areas other than just faces. Or if you really have had many occurrences of not recognizing someone when you actually know them.

While I can definitely recognize my family members I have had moments where I see them in a context I am not accustomed to, where it takes me a moment or two to recognize them.

With people I don't know well, however, it is extremely difficult to recognize them. I can see faces but everyone looks the same unless they have a drastic look about them (like my daughter's teacher has spiky hair, I always recognize her).

It is worse still on TV or in films... every actor of the same gender, hair and skin color pretty much looks the same to me.

But I *can* recognize people I know, and I *can* see faces, so I don't know if I officially have prosopagnosia or not.

Until Prosopagnosia is recognized as occuring in a spectrum, itself, you probably wouldn't get a dx. But you would definitely seem to be on that spectrum.

Some would claim that they do anyway!

I know this now...but for several years I thought I must be in denial about once having it, and it was made worse when I misidentified a picture of Bill Clinton's face without his hair as Queen Elizabeth. Also I didn't do as well in one of those online tests where they show you random faces, then ask you to identify if you've seen them before. In fact, until I did OK in a facial remembering test when I went to a neuropsych, I beleved I had a form of this.

So I guess what I'm saying it, if I could believe I have prosopagnosia, I could believe I have any trait of any kind, good or bad.

Yeah when I was diagnosed with prosopagnosia as a comorbid for my HFA the test made it pretty clear.

*doctor flashes an 8/11 inch postercard with a picture of a living room for about a second then holds it flipped around where I cant see the image in front of his face*

What color was the couch?
Brown
How many apples were in the fruit bowl?
8
What was the coffee table made of?
Wood
What color are my eyes?
<pause>
I dunno
What color is my hair?
I dunno
Do I have a pointed chin?
I dunno
What color are your husbands eyes?
<long pause>
Im not liking this game.
What about your mother? Your father? Can you tell me the color of anyones eyes?
Uhhhh....