Face Recognition / Context

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With me it's definitely just with people being in places / situations I'm not used to seeing them - ie. a workmate out of uniform at the mall - or people IN places / situations I'm used to seeing them but dressed differently - ie. workmates coming up to me in their street clothes at work (ie. on their day off).

Oddly enough I have no problem picking actors/esses in tv shows and movies - "oh that's so and so who's also been in this and that and the other..."

Sometimes I do okay with that and sometimes I do horribly. If they change their appearance drastically (Johnny Depp, for example, or Joe Pantoliano in Bound and then The Matrix) I may very well not recognize them. I didn't really recognize them until the 90s when friends would point out actors, so I started looking.

I've been sort of amusing myself while watching Battlestar Galactica. Since there are some actors who play several characters, some of those characters with different hair, it's interesting to me how, say, Tricia Helfer can in one scene go from her curly platinum blonde look to a darker blonde, straight hair, pulled back in a ponytail and she looks like two different people. Also interesting to me is that I have never ever recognized Deanna/3 as the same woman who played Xena, although I know intellectually that this is Lucy Lawless. Her hair is too different.

It was also interesting to compare Kara Thrace with short hair vs. long hair - I am not sure I'd recognize her if I hadn't been given cues as to who she was. Adama with his moustache looked pretty different, although it is hard to say whether or not I'd recognize him without context, either.

I guess my surprise here wasn't that I have any difficulty at all with this sort of thing, but realizing that it wasn't normal.

Same here. Every once in a while, people whom I went to high school with will call my name out, and I'll turn around, unable to match their face to anything currently in my database. After I hear the person speak, however, I'll almost instantly recognize their voice, and then I'll remember the person who called my name (remember them as they were in a high-school context - I'll even start off the conversation with the last thing we discussed way back).

Just to test whether I am really faceblind, I had my sister look at two characters played by the same actor, who - even knowing this is the case - I have significant trouble recognizing as the same actor:

Prince George in Black Adder the Third:



Dr. House:



My sister immediately recognized "Prince George" as "Dr. House" before she remembered his name was Hugh Laurie. I only realized this because I saw Hugh Laurie's name in the Black Adder credits and looked up the series on Wiki to see which role he played.

For that matter, I have trouble recognizing Rowan Atkinson as the same actor across his Blackadder roles, let alone as Mr. Bean.

This is strange to me because before this past year I never thought my face recognition was any different from anyone else's, yet I keep finding more evidence that I really do have issues with this. How did I not notice before?

Verdandi:
I'm certain I'm not faceblind, but I wouldn't have recognized those images as the same person.

(I don't watch TV or movies so can't comment on other instances of the same actor appearing in different roles.)

I picked the first image I could find that wasn't hosted on a blog. That's not the same image my sister looked at (but that one was hosted on a blog). She didn't even hesitate, immediately recognized him. And recognized Rowan Atkinson immediately, even though I have a difficult time seeing any of the Black Adders (except maybe the first) as the same actor who played Mr. Bean.

This is, I think, the image she identified:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sD2YV-xd-YU/R ... George.jpg

But it's not just one thing, like this was an example I chose to use today, but it's part of a pattern - change an actor's hair and to me they practically look like a different person. I mean as I posted earlier I've been paying attention to BSG where - due to the Cylon models - they have some actors playing different characters with different hair (like Tricia Helfer) or even different hair in different scenes (several characters).

And I mean before that it goes back years, I just never thought it was strange to have to stop and work out whether Eddie Izzard:



Is not in fact Tim Curry:



Or taking an entire movie to recognize this actor's voice in Bound:



Is the same as this actor's voice in The Matrix:



Because I never recognized his face.

Hmm: One of my nieces recognized Hugh Laurie (from the linked black and white picture) instantly. Another niece didn't recognize him at all.

It should be noted that my mother thinks that the second niece may also have AS.

Hmm...
I don't think I'd have made the connection between the linked black-and-white picture and the Dr. House picture immediately, although when it's pointed out I can see that it makes sense. I also don't think I'd have immediately made the connection between the Bound/Matrix pair you show.

I wonder if very rarely watching TV/movies has an effect in my case, so that even though I'm not faceblind, I don't have as much practice as most people identifying the same actor in different roles - in real life most people don't change their appearance as much.

Oddly, I have a difficult time keeping track in movies of which characters are the same person as each other and which are different. That almost sounds like faceblindness, except that I have no trouble recognizing faces in real life.

In my experience, people around me tend to catch these connections much more quickly than I do.

Two people I checked with today made the connection instantly. There was no delay, just "Oh, that's Dr. House!" I didn't tell them anything, just asked "Who is this?"



I didn't think I had trouble with faces until I started paying attention and noticing that yes, I really do - and have a history of having trouble with not recognizing people, and especially not recognizing them out of context. An all too common experience for me is people greeting me somewhere and striking up a conversation and I have no idea who they are. As it usually turns out, I do know them, I just don't recognize them.

The other thing is I've been paying more attention to how I recognize people, and I am not sure I would have any idea who my therapist was if I met her somewhere else (say in a store or movie theater). For example.

It seems to be far more apparent with TV shows and movies, and of course easier to demonstrate here with images than pointing out how I fail to recognize real people in some circumstances.

I should also add where you say you wouldn't have made the connection immediately, but now it makes sense? I still can't make the connection. I know, intellectually, that Prince George is Hugh Laurie, but what I see isn't who I think of as Hugh Laurie at all. There is no instinctive recognition.

I am able to make some connections between the Bound/Matrix pictures, but the way I identified the actor was by closing my eyes and imagining him speaking and looking at who I visualized - which was Cipher. Once I knew that, I could see, like, his nose was similar.

The whole Eddie Izzard thing is not the only thing of its kind. I had a similar problem with Tom Sizemore and George Clooney, and other actors whose names I can't recall right now.

When I said in the previous post that I didn't think I was faceblind, not suggesting you are. I'm having trouble in this exchange because there's a lot of stuff that is making me seriously think about this, and I have barely posted a fraction of it.

Also, one thing about recognizing people I see regularly is context: I see them in the same context all the time, so if I see someone in the house who has a certain build, hairstyle, etc, I know who it is. If I see them somewhere else, say at CostCo, it's entirely likely that I won't recognize them at all because I'm not primed to expect a certain set of people within that environment, or at least not that certain set of people.

Not long ago I turned on the TV and saw a man speaking directly to the camera in close-up. It took me about three seconds to recognize him, which doesn't sound very long, except that it was President Obama.

Even now, I can hardly see how the pictures are of the same person. They look totally different. Maybe because the things I look for in someone's face for identification are different than that of NT's?

What's creepy to me is that a few weeks ago I saw a picture of someone who I thought was me. I didn't remember having my picture taken, so I was really confused. I still don't know if it was me or not.

Last edited by SammichEater on 08 Jun 2011, 7:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Which ones? Hugh Laurie as Prince George and House or the pictures of Joe Pantoliano as Caesar in Bound and Cipher in The Matrix?

Both, actually.

It amazes me that anyone recognizes them as the same person. When my sister and niece both said, immediately, "That's Dr. House" I was a bit surprised that they could do that.

This is kind of amusing. When I look at the pictures of Hugh Laurie right next to each other I still don't see them as the same person whatsoever, they just don't look like the same face at all to me. I can kind of see the similarities in the Joe Pantoliano but if they weren't right next to each other I don't think I would guess they were the same person.

I have some difficulty remembering/recognizing faces, though I don't necessarily know that many people so I tend to see the same faces over and over. I can recall two times this year so far where people started a conversation with me and even by the time we were done talking I still had no idea who they were. In one of the instances I asked my friend who it was and then I realized I had met the person before. The other occasion still has me wonder just who the hell I was talking too. Usually when I don't recognize someone just hearing a voice or starting a conversation is enough to figure out how it is. I find it quite distributing when someone knows me but I don't know them.