face blindness - can you be partially face blind?

Page 1 of 3 [ 34 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3  Next

colliegrace
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Nov 2022
Age: 30
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,263
Location: USA

18 Mar 2023, 7:44 am

I CAN recognize faces as familiar or even identify people sometimes. But most often I'm not sure who is who and I often get people who know me but I don't know them and have to either fake it til I make it or just straight up tell them hey I don't know you please tell me who you are. Is this a degree of face blindness, or is it normal?


_________________
ASD, most likely have dyscalculia & BPD as well. Also dx'd ADHD-C, but don't think it's accurate.
RAADs: 104 | ASQ: 30 | Aspie Quiz: 116/200 (84% probability of being atypical)

Also diagnosed with: seasonal depression, anxiety, OCD


Mountain Goat
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 13 May 2019
Gender: Male
Posts: 14,202
Location: .

18 Mar 2023, 8:15 am

Prosopragnosia. Yes. For me it kicks in and out and I don't know when it will be. On occasions I have evwn not known my own family if I see them where I did not expect them to be or if they changed their coat etc. Yet people who have harmed me I stare at and even though they try to disguise themselves I know them. It is odd. But I have to stare at them which I don't normally do as I tend to not be able to talk to people if I have to look at them so I avoid direct eye contact to be able to talk.
May be a link somehow in this?
Anyway. When I worked on the railways I used to remember where people were sitting, even if the train had a thousand seats! If people moved seat I would ask to see their tickets again as I would assume they had just got on the train unless I saw them move.
Most of my working years were at bicycle shops and I would know people through their bicycles which is strange as one model of bicycle we must have sold well over 100 of them and yet I would know the bike, so if one had a row of identical bicycles, I could normally pick out the exact one, but not know why I knew. But with peoples faces I would group people. I mean, I could think it was a certain person and have a conversationwith a puzzled person who genuinely would not know me! So is not just not recognizing people as there is more to it then that.
If I think I might know someone I hang back to wait to see how they react towards me so I make no mistakes as getting it wrong is embarissing! But at the same time I have not recognised people at all and walked past just saying"Hello" OR I have thought I know them but cant remember where from which I once did to my Mum, cousin, aunts etc, and my Mum has the same, so she has done it to me.
As a child it was petrifying to be separated from either of my parents hands as I genuinely would struggle to find them again in a crowded place if someone walked between us and I would lose sight of where they were. I would panic! And this is the major sign of prosopragnosia when one is young. Also to add, that the majority of people (Two thirds) who haveprosopragnosia issues also are on the spectrum.

But to sum up, with faceblindness it is something that comes and goes but one does not have a clue when it comes and goes or has any control over when it comes and goes. So I have lost friends due to it because they stop speaking to me without telling me why, and this has happened so many times when I am totally unaware if I have ignored them.
A few days ago, my Mum was at a laundrette she had never been beford, ad started chatting to a girl totally unaware until in the conversation the girl said her Dads name, who happened to beone of my Mums lifelong friends. She never knew she was chatting to his daughter!

I am.a very visual thinker as I think best in picture and film form, and so it is odd I get faceblind moments! But somehow with faces... But give me carsnor bixycles that look the same and I can pick a single one out and not know how I know but I am right!


_________________
.


Edna3362
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 29 Oct 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 11,367
Location: ᜆᜄᜎᜓᜄ᜔

18 Mar 2023, 8:31 am

It's not that I have a hard time recognizing people.
It's more like I have a hard time remembering their faces.

I can recognize everyone I knew in childhood even with all their changes in appearances because I can remember them.
Even the ones I never spoke for decades. Just as long as I did actually speak and interact with them then.

Yet I cannot seem to recognize people I've met until about several months after -- and that's because I struggle to remember them until there's enough repetition for me to able to remember them at all.

Get rid of memory issues and possibly human apathy of not bothering to look at someone's face, then no more "prosopagnosia" for me.

I can't remember the details and features of faces well.
Unless I seen them often enough, or associated their whole face strong enough with something to a point that I can visualize them in my head.

And prosopagnosia has nothing to do with memory issues. Or being bad at visual thinking.
It's a cognitive disorder, kinda like a form of face recognition visual processing dyslexia.


TLDR;
I don't have prosopagnosia.
I have memory issues. And I don't pay much attention to one's faces.


_________________
Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.


Dengashinobi
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 15 Dec 2022
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 598

18 Mar 2023, 9:57 am

Yes, I have that too. When I see someone I came to know briefly it's hard for me to recognise their face when I meet them again. People greet me and I'm like wtf? Or I recognise that a face is familiar but I can't make the connection in time. Or if two people look alike, usually siblings, I have a hard time telling who is who. I'm partially face blind.



funeralxempire
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 39
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 25,188
Location: Right over your left shoulder

18 Mar 2023, 9:59 am

I struggle to recognize faces quite a bit. Often I rely on body language and how a person moves.

I can learn to identify people by how their walking sounds, although that's mostly only helpful if they're a floor above me.


_________________
"If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made... and they won't even admit the knife is there." Malcolm X
戦争ではなく戦争と戦う


Double Retired
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Jul 2020
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: U.S.A.         (Mid-Atlantic)

18 Mar 2023, 10:41 am

colliegrace wrote:
I CAN recognize faces as familiar or even identify people sometimes. But most often I'm not sure who is who and I often get people who know me but I don't know them and have to either fake it til I make it or just straight up tell them hey I don't know you please tell me who you are. Is this a degree of face blindness, or is it normal?
Sounds about right to me.

If I get to know someone then I am much more likely to recognize their face.

And, in any event, I try to treat everyone as if they are a casual acquaintance. Worst case scenario, the phrase "help my memory" comes to mind.


_________________
When diagnosed I bought champagne!
I finally knew why people were strange.


skibum
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Jul 2013
Age: 57
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,295
Location: my own little world

18 Mar 2023, 11:47 am

colliegrace wrote:
I CAN recognize faces as familiar or even identify people sometimes. But most often I'm not sure who is who and I often get people who know me but I don't know them and have to either fake it til I make it or just straight up tell them hey I don't know you please tell me who you are. Is this a degree of face blindness, or is it normal?

I am partially face blind.


_________________
"I'm bad and that's good. I'll never be good and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me."

Wreck It Ralph


Mountain Goat
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 13 May 2019
Gender: Male
Posts: 14,202
Location: .

18 Mar 2023, 12:10 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
I struggle to recognize faces quite a bit. Often I rely on body language and how a person moves.

I can learn to identify people by how their walking sounds, although that's mostly only helpful if they're a floor above me.


Often I do not know people until they speak where I will then know their voice. Sometimes I know people by the way they drive or the way they ride their bikes.


_________________
.


funeralxempire
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Oct 2014
Age: 39
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 25,188
Location: Right over your left shoulder

18 Mar 2023, 12:16 pm

Mountain Goat wrote:
Sometimes I know people by the way they drive or the way they ride their bikes.


I'd likely be one of those people. :lol:


_________________
"If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made... and they won't even admit the knife is there." Malcolm X
戦争ではなく戦争と戦う


Mountain Goat
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 13 May 2019
Gender: Male
Posts: 14,202
Location: .

18 Mar 2023, 12:24 pm

Edna3362 wrote:
It's not that I have a hard time recognizing people.
It's more like I have a hard time remembering their faces.


Scares me because I lose peoples faces in my mind, especially if I don't regularly see them, and also as I am not a natural words person unlike my Mum who definately is remembering names is not my strong point. So names and faces are not my thing BUT I do pick up on things that other people do not as I learned to compensate in other ways instead.

Yet some people I can pick out anywhere even if they wear a wig! But then it comes to most people who are a blur. I mean... Well. Hard to explain. Once saw a TV film or it could have been Dr Who? where peoples faces were blank flat skin and it terrified me because to me many people sort of dissapear like that. Covid face masks (No way I can wear one anyway) make me feel on sdge amplified because seeing others wearing facemasks where is their top half of peoples face that I seem to have the most difficulties with? Not sure. But facemasks on others make me terrified. Years ago at the dentists before dentists had to wear them I was ok, but since they wear masks visiting them is scary even though they are nice people.


_________________
.


renaeden
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Jun 2005
Age: 47
Gender: Female
Posts: 2,173
Location: Western Australia

19 Mar 2023, 12:57 am

I once had to find my mum in a supermarket and I asked myself, 'What is she wearing today?'. Can't even recognise my own mum!

I also saw my optometrist in a shop but my housemate recognised her before I did.

Also, like you Mountain Goat, people wearing masks really make it hard for me. I usually rely a bit on voices but masks make them muffled.



ToughDiamond
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 15 Sep 2008
Age: 71
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,147

19 Mar 2023, 1:50 am

A lot of the time I wouldn't be able to very accurately describe the faces of people I've met, but I can very often recognise them if I see them again, or if I see a fairly representative photograph of them. So I guess I can't be exactly face blind - the information must be in my memory somewhere. I probably miss a lot of details, but I usually retain enough to know the face when I see it. Sometimes I see strong similarities between the faces of two different people when they're possibly not so alike as I think they are, and when I see them next to each other I notice I overestimated the similarity, but the similarity is always there, just not as marked as I'd thought it was. It's possible that I use a more limited and specialised set of cues for face recognition than most people do. I don't usually think about it, I just pick up a subjective impression of a given face. I'd have some trouble putting it into words.



Pepe
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 11 Jun 2013
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 26,635
Location: Australia

19 Mar 2023, 2:30 am

Quote:
face blindness - can you be partially face blind?


Yes, I have PARTIAL face blindness.



Mountain Goat
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 13 May 2019
Gender: Male
Posts: 14,202
Location: .

19 Mar 2023, 2:49 am

Pepe wrote:
Quote:
face blindness - can you be partially face blind?


Yes, I have PARTIAL face blindness.


Do you also find that you do not know when you have it? So you can lose friends who assume you are ignoring them without knowing that you have?


_________________
.


Fern
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2011
Age: 38
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,339

19 Mar 2023, 7:03 pm

colliegrace wrote:
I CAN recognize faces as familiar or even identify people sometimes. But most often I'm not sure who is who and I often get people who know me but I don't know them and have to either fake it til I make it or just straight up tell them hey I don't know you please tell me who you are. Is this a degree of face blindness, or is it normal?


Situational face blindness is a thing, though I can't say if you experience the same thing as I do. I have been diagnosed with developmental prosopagnosia (associative type). I can usually tell who people around me are, but situations that throw me are when I see someone somewhere unexpected, or when people change their hair or eyebrows. I've not recognized longtime friends or even once my own sister when they change these kinds of attributes.



Double Retired
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 31 Jul 2020
Age: 69
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: U.S.A.         (Mid-Atlantic)

19 Mar 2023, 10:16 pm

Well...situation matters.

I tend to recognize people in their normal settings much better than I recognize them somewhere unexpected.


_________________
When diagnosed I bought champagne!
I finally knew why people were strange.