Might this be prosopagnosia?
Read my experience if you want and tell me your thoughts.
A couple of months ago I departed from my home country to come here abroad, I came here with a person that I first met the day of the departure and we spent the flight together, about 16 hours. We talked and seated near during the flight.
When we arrived at the airport I said bye promising I'd look for him on Facebook to add him.
The same day I went to the city hall because I had to deal with bureaucraucy stuff and there I thought I met him, the guy I saw at the city hall was bald but looked the same to me, he passed in front of me and didn't greet me he didn't even look at me. Then while waiting for my turn he happened to seat about four seats away from me talking with the guys between me and him but he never looked at me, I felt uncomfortable because I was afraid our eyes might met.
In the evening I went home which is a dormitory and the next day I met him, he appened to live in the same place as me. I was panicking when I saw him but when he talked to me to say hi I realized he was not the guy I spent the flight together because he spoke English to me (our native language is not English).
I was shocked. He looked the same to me, I even gave up adding him on Facebook because I thought he didn't want to talk to me. Maybe the baldness got me confused.
Here is my question if you don't want to read the long post. I don't I have many issues recognizing faces if I meet the person shortly after, in fact I did prosopagnosia tests and I my score was ok but I think I tend to forget faces quickly. Can this be some form of prosopagnosia, remembering faces if little time passes (seconds or minutes) but forgetting them if more time passes (hours or days)?
Now, here abroad I also don't recognize people but I'm in an asian country and here people are more similar to each other, I know I'm not the only foreigner with such problems so it might not count.
Unfortunately I don't have many of such experiences because in my home country I rarely went out and never met new people.
Please share your thoughts.
Last edited by Nyctalope on 18 May 2017, 5:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
As you have identified, it is hard to tell from your descriptions whether or not you are likely to have prosopagnosia. I have not been diagnosed with prosopagnosia (I haven't ever been to a psychologist/psychiatrist), but I have had experiences where I have spoken to a person (whom I had never met before) for 5-10 minutes at a conference. I then turned to walk away, but suddenly thought of something to tell the person. I turned back (after maybe 3 seconds), and had not idea which of the several people nearby I had been talking to. This sort of thing happens quite often to me. Even in the short term I cannot remember a face unless there is a particularly prominent feature.
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Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1 without accompanying language impairment
I find it easiest to connect with people through the medium of fandoms, and enjoy the feeling of solidarity.
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I see, either I don't have prosopagnosia or I have a subtler one than yours. I think I can recognize people easily after having just looked at them (except for asians) but I'll try to analyse myself more during my time abroad to get a clearer picture of my abilities. Thank you.
Any other experience concerning prosopagnosia is also welcome.
It's difficult to say but I would say no - if you had prosopagnosia(at least as severe as I do) you wouldn't recognize the face as familiar if the person went bald, unless he had some other easily recognizable features such as an unique nose shape.
The truth is everyone of us has a doppelganger/look-a-like http://www.ilooklikeyou.com/ , https://findmydoppelganger.net/ , you probably met 2 of them.
From my experience it is especially common abroad. When my class went to a student exchange with about 15 german students one of them looked identical to one of my classmates, except for eye color - one had green, the other had brown. They looked as twins even when they stood by each other and it wasn't just my opinion.
I have 2 explanations of this - either it is one huge coincidence or people unintentionally look for familiar faces in unfamiliar environment(especially when most people look drastically different from people in the area you were from) and there is a conformation bias at work when you find someone slightly similar.
And it is a known fact it is difficult for pretty much everyone to distinguish people of different race/ethnic than their own (unless they were raised in multi-race environment with a lot of people of both races) even if they don't have prosopagnosia. They are just not used to that type of faces and will consider everyone "similar" to the one or two people of that race they know just because of the skin color or the characteristic bones shape.