Face Blindness?

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I don't fully understand what this. I wonder if I might have it, or if my experiences are typical to most people. Could someone elaborate on this, please?

Face blindness is when you can recognize someone only in the context in which you normally see them. For example, I became friends with a woman at church. In high school, I saw her at a career fair but didn't recognize her because it was a different context.

Its quite embarrassing actually, you are walking down the street and someone waves or chats with you familiarly and you have no idea who they are . I have also thought one person was two different people because she would either be dressed in work clothes or casual, I recognize people better from a distance because of their distinctive walk or they generally have they same style of hair and clothes ,if they get a haircut I may not recognize them.

I'm forever seeing people I think I know, and then realising it's not them!

As far as recognition of expressions goes, I never used to think I had it, until one day after I was diagnosed, I realised that if someone frowns at me, I always take it as anger. I don't consider that maybe, for instance, they just can't hear what I'm saying, or that they are in agreement with me when I'm expressing a negative opinion about something.

I also noticed that when I think I'm smiling, with my mouth closed, when I look in the mirror I realise I'm grimacing... so it seems to work both directions

I don't have this problem. I have very good memory skills, particularly visual. I can recognize a person even when only part of their face is visible.

Do the face blindness test that Scientist has listed conveniently in her tests list thread at the top of General Autism Discussion. That may give you a better understanding of whether you have it or not.

You're in good company. The Crown Princess of Sweden, Victoria, suffers from prosopagnosia (face blindness), but has been quite open about it.

Google "prosopagnosia". That's the proper term for it. Wikipedia has a passable entry.

They first recognized it in head-injury and stroke patients. People would lose the ability to recognize faces, often including their own. It was very dramatic because these people had been able to recognize faces all their lives until their injuries. This is how we determined that humans actually have an area of our brains specialized to recognize faces.

However, it took a long while to realize that another variant--developmental prosopagnosia--also existed. People with this kind of prosopagnosia weren't as affected because they grew up with it and usually learned other ways to recognize people, by consciously learning their unique features, depending on body shape and movement, voices, and hairstyles. When you put these people into brain scanners and showed them faces, they processed the faces the same way they did any other object; and they were as good at telling faces apart as they were any other object, while typical subjects processed faces with the usual specialized face-recognition area.

Prosopagnosia, both acquired and developmental, comes in various strengths. Some people are on the borderline, simply taking longer than most to memorize faces. Others will recognize only themselves, family, and very long-term friends; a few are so bad at memorizing faces that they do not recognize even family. It's common not to be able to recognize people unless there are cues other than the face present. One test for prosopagnosia displays the faces of famous people with their hair and surroundings cropped out, for example; without these peripheral cues, most prosopagnosiacs do not recognize those with any but the most unusual features.

If you are not face-blind, here's a way to understand what it might be like. Visit an animal shelter. Look at a plain brown tabby cat. Look at another. Look at a third. Make sure you meet at least twenty plain brown tabbies. Then come back after a week; try to tell apart all those plain brown tabby cats by looking just at their faces. Can you do it? Did you have to memorize peripheral information, like the cat's behavior, it shape and size, or the pattern of its stripes? Did you have to memorize which room you found the cat in? Did you mistake one cat for another? Were you unsure whether or not you had met a cat? That's what it's like to have face-blindness.

I have enough other problems so I don't honestly 'care' what it's like to have face-blindness, anymore than anyone else 'cares' what my challenges are. Just needed to point that out.

Hey, psychology special interest here. You will not catch me missing an opportunity to lecture.

I knew that!!

Yup, faceblind as well as aspie. Makes for an interesting life trying to work out which is my child when I pick up from events, for a start. Often can't recognise people I've known for years.

I don't have this issue.

I did not find this test accurate as in it I am remembering the faces as objects and basing my matches on parts of the face not the face as a whole . Plus in real life we do not study a face for 20 seconds if at all so how can we memorize it even as a object. This is where non recognition of a person out of context comes you are remembering them as a whole object as apposed to a combination of facial features .

I have face blindness (if there are extremes, I have it bad), which is especially true when it comes to blonde women (including my own sister). For instance, I battle to tell the difference between a number of actresses, and keep having to ask my better half who it is.

My coping mechanism is to use the person's voice to identify them. I have a good aural memory, which goes to mimicking and recognising voice actors (seen in another thread on WP).

I've learnt to not take it seriously. I tell people I'm bad with names (which is usually a good enough excuse), even though the opposite is true - good with names, bad with faces.

An amusing anecdote: I met a local celebrity at a party once, who had been in a long-running television show of which I was a big fan. Her hair was longer than it had been on TV, so she was familiar to me, but I couldn't place her (and this was pre-Dx).

I asked my standard question, "Where do I know you from?" When she responded, "Do you watch [name of TV channel]?", the penny dropped immediately, and according to the various people in the room, the look on my face was priceless.

lol, that one has not happened to me that I know of. XD
I did know two girls who I thought were one girl though! And then I became bad enemies with one of them, and every time I saw either of them, I didn't know weather or not to hide! D:
The poor nice one, I think I always acted snippy when she talked to me in the halls because I was always trying to decide which one she was.;;;;;