
“Coming Out” as Face Blind - kawera
http://narrative.ly/coming-face-blind/
======
petercooper
The bit about structuring conversations in a way to tease out if the other
person recognizes _you_ resonates with me. It can be fun, in the sense of
being a challenge or game, once you get used to it. Now I'm older and more
"over" myself, I'll often just admit if I don't recognize you now.

I don't think I have what this woman has to the same degree, but I have a
condition which causes me to fail to remember social and physical situations
in any easily recallable way which results in similar problems.

~~~
tempestn
Yeah, this resonated with me too. I can recognize faces, but I'm terrible with
remembering names, or even remembering whether I ever knew a name. I can know
someone casually for months and have their name just disappear from my memory,
or I can see someone I know I recognize, but have no memory of whether or not
I've actually been introduced to them and learned their name. Those are the
worst—not knowing whether I've just seen someone before, or if I actually
should know their name, so not knowing whether to introduce myself.

I find that if I learn a little bit about someone when I meet them it can help
a bit, as it anchors the name to something in my memory. Otherwise, just being
honest feels best: "Hey, I recognize you, but I'm terrible with names...
what's your name again?" Works alright whether I've been introduced to them in
the past or not.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
More recently I’ve found if I meet someone new, either at work or socially, I
write down their name, or email it to myself on my phone.

After the initial interaction I can then make any additional notes I think
might help in remember relevant information about the person.

I don’t keep any of this info, afterwards I’ll either know their name from
repeat interactions and delete it as unneeded, or not need it anyway, and
delete it or throw it out.

~~~
toomanybeersies
On a similar note, repetition is a great way to remember names.

Try to repeat the persons name in conversation a few times, just slip in in
there.

For instance, if they say their name is Charles, respond with "So Charles,
how's your day been so far?".

Not only does it help you remember their name, you're also more personable.

Since I've started consciously doing this, it's helped a lot.

I'm terrible with names. It's entirely possible for me to meet someone and
know practically their entire life story, but not remember their name.

~~~
coolguy132435
I do this all the time when meeting new people. my memory for facial
recognition is much better than an unaided association to a name alone, so
shortly after meeting a new person, I try to mention some aspect of their
appearance in a sentence. e.g. "Hey Steve - you've got a cool hairstyle."

It can come off weird to some people, but their name would be forgotten in
seconds otherwise, so I've decided it's a worthwhile method.

------
throwaway84742
I wish it was easier for people to “come out” with their deficiencies. I’m
miserable on the phone for example. I just can’t really communicate unless I’m
looking at the person on the other end. Yet there are a lot of circumstances
where there’s no other option, chief among which is discussing business
opportunities. It’s stupid. Videoconferencing has been out there for 15 years,
yet people are still not willing to accommodate such a minor request.

~~~
DoreenMichele
You sound like you might have CAPD. A common coping mechanism is lip reading
to help fill in missing auditory information, often without consciously
realizing it.

I don't know what your situation is, but my sons just don't use the phone. I
handle all phone calls.

I'm so used to us just side stepping such issues that I have trouble imagining
feeling obligated to connect a certain way. Some people prefer email. Some
people prefer texting. Etc.

~~~
throwaway84742
Probably not. I’m perfectly fine with audiobooks, for example.

------
lisper
I remember attending a party once and introducing myself to someone who, it
turned out, I had met and had an extensive conversation with about an hour
earlier. I totally didn't recognize this person.

I don't have full-on face blindness. I do recognize the faces of people I see
a lot. But I still struggle to remember people's names, especially if I don't
see them every day.

------
205guy
I hesitate to write this, but it seems that face-blindness could be related to
autism spectrum. I know someone who is diagnosed on the spectrum and has face
blindness and feels the social anxiety of it in much the same way as the
author. Also, the author describes several behaviors that are on the spectrum.

I also noticed that many of the anxieties described by the author were
projected and not materialized. She was afraid of how people would react and
how she would feel in awkward situations, but when it finally happened and she
admitted her condition, it went fine. Shyness and social anxiety have an
element of self-fulfilling prophecy.

------
recollectorrr
You really have to wonder, from an evolutionary perspective, how and when this
skill became so modular and specialized, that mostly everyone is born with
this innate capability.

If you take this idea, that facial recognition is a modular specialization
that most humans have inherited at birth (such that it can be added or
subtracted from a person's instinctive skills, leaving everything else more or
less untouched), and cross it over to other species, I'd take a wild guess
that this is the missing piece in animals that fail to recognize themselves in
mirrors.

Comparing elephants and dolphins with dogs and cats, it's tempting to
contemplate that while dogs and cats can become familiar with us, they're
likely face blind. Elephants and dolphins, while capable of passing mirror
self recognition tests to a certain degree, are probably not as adept, because
they lack the same socialization demands that have intensely pressured humans
for a couple thousand years.

I have to figure in earlier periods of human history, an inability to
recognize individuals, especially in similarly peopled enclaves might have
been supremely deadly. Not just boss-in-the-elevator deadly (as mentioned in
the article), but literally stab-you-in-the-back deadly.

So much so, that we aren't born with other skills like capable of walking
directly after being birthed, like other animals, but for the most part, by
age three, if we can recognize faces, we can pick our parents out of a line
up.

We know literacy and written language is a hard driver of civilization. I
wonder how much, the innate capacity for human facial recognition plays into
the ability to read text? It seems like dyslexia is related to the degree of
rendomization of the pattern of receptors in the eyes, but facial recognition
seems strongly bound to processing and memory.

Is it a prevailing trait that predates history, or is the capacity to record
history, and history's emergence and fidelity concurrent with the prevalence
of human facial recognition as almost pure instinct?

Furthermore, imagine a world where the selective pressure is removed, and the
trait is replaced by an augmented reality product, a device that recognizes
people for you. How easily ruled would those people of the future be?

~~~
schaefer
Please note: facial recognition is learned, not innate.

[https://www.leafscience.org/visual-
recognition/](https://www.leafscience.org/visual-recognition/)

Thanks.

~~~
tempestn
Some aspect of it must be innate, or it wouldn't be possible for people to
have face blindness.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That's specious reasoning: something being learnt doesn't mean that people
can't have an adaptation that aids, or inhibits, that particular learning.

Running isn't innate, we learn to do it. Most children do it. But some people
lack the apparatus, some are just habituated against it, some are impaired in
other ways. And, running is a defining characteristic of humans. (It's not a
perfect analogy but I think it fits)

------
siliconc0w
I have a mild version of this - usually I lean on a person's trappings,
context, or they might hit a sort of LRU cache. In a crowded situation though
all bets are off. Makes dating difficult - I've walked past girlfriends
multiple times. Even if you try to disclaim this Prosopagnosia thing, there is
a sort of innate offense you give when you don't recognize someone. The eyes
give it away. Also if I look you up and down I'm not (necessarily) checking
you out, I'm looking for distinctive characteristics.

------
rectang
The Wikipedia list of (famous) people with face blindness is super
interesting. Chuck Close (who cites it as inspiration for his portrait work),
Jane Goodall, Markos Moulitsas, Oliver Sacks, Woz...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_with_prosopagn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_with_prosopagnosia)

~~~
Improvotter
Wow Steve Wozniak, never expected to see him on there.

------
DoreenMichele
I have a child with this issue. He doesn't live with constant stress over it.
I had not really thought about how well we accommodate it. The article was eye
opening in that regard.

We've learned lots of tidbits over the years that help him feel okay about it.
For example, normal people are more reliant on context than they realize and
can fail to recognize someone out of uniform or met someplace different than
the norm.

For example, see _Person Swap_ :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBPG_OBgTWg)

------
_Marak_
On the opposite spectrum of face blindness, there has been recent progress in
the field of identifying "Super recognisers".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser)

Super recognisers are able to remember faces very well and score high on the
Glasgow Face Matching Test.

~~~
mlevental
interesting. for once I'm one of those people in the comments claiming an
exceptional condition. for most of my life I've been able to "place a face"
almost every single time. as a kid it would manifest itself when I would
recognize kids from the various schools I'd attended while moving around.
lately it's been recognizing people around town that I've seen on dating apps
(I live in a smaller town now but it happened when I was living in NYC too).
too bad it's basically a worthless talent (other than the occasional person
that's charmed that I remembered them from some conversion we'd had years
ago). ironically I'm shit at remembering names.

~~~
soperj
Yep, in this day in age it's almost horrible when you can go, oh right I saw
that person's picture on the internet randomly, we've never actually met, or
even talked.

------
djsumdog
I had a girlfriend who was faceblind. She had to explain this to me once, as
she walked right by me in a library we were meeting at, as I had cut and dyed
my hair.

She had some autoimmune diseases and believed/had read up that her face
blindness was likely an effect of the chronic pain she dealt with.

------
runarberg
I might have a mild face blindness. I was never diagnosed, and might never be.
This has never affected me in any way (other then a few awkward interactions).
I am able to recognize people as soon as the start talking, sometimes I can
even recognize people when they start moving. I also recognize people by their
clothes, hair, etc.

My wife was the first one to notice I might have this condition (and yes it
has happened more then once that I don’t recognize her). This is despite the
fact that I have a BS in psychology and had read a lot about face blindness in
university. It just never occurred to me that I might have this. Those awkward
moments I mentioned earlier, I usually blamed on me not paying attention,
being stupid, shy or something else.

------
make3
Very interesting article. Too bad google glass didn't catch up, or we could
set up reasonably inconspicuous face recognition to help these people.
Otherwise, I guess they could have a hidden camera somewhere on them and a
(wireless) earbud that tells them who's in front of them.

~~~
matte_black
That sounds like a much better solution than google glass, and one that we
could even build in a weekend.

~~~
make3
the real issue is where to mine the names and pictures from. Facebook?
LinkedIn? The tighter the pool of people the best the face recognition will
be. Asking people to enter everyone in by hand is probably unreasonable,
though I'm not sure

~~~
Nition
I think just the system recognizing faces that it's seen before would be good
enough. Entering by hand isn't too bad.

When it detects a new face, add it to the "seen faces" list, and let the user
go back though that (sorted most recent at the top) whenever they like, to add
names and maybe a short note like "met at party in LA". So you have to
remember their name yourself but only momentarily until you can enter it into
the local DB.

Whenever that face is detected again, it shows the info.

That way you can skip Internet connectivity on the device entirely.

------
creep
I have a similar problem and have never been able to figure it out: random
people look like people I know. Nearly every day I see someone who I'm sure is
someone else. What I have to do is stare at them very pointedly, and if they
look away I know it's not someone I'm acquainted with. It feels to me very
similar to the way the author describes her condition, only it's sort of
opposite in a way.

------
xupybd
Sorry I don’t know how to word this but why would it be upsetting if people
asked her questions about living with this?

I’d like to know just so I can be more sensitive in the future. I’d have never
thought it would be a problem and would have asked way too many questions. Is
this unique to this case or something I should avoid in general?

~~~
codingdave
It isn't unique to this case - anyone who is different will get genuine
questions over it. But there are a few problems I have with it:

1) The medical details of my life aren't any of your business. And people tend
to let their curiosity cross those lines. They don't do it deliberately, and
it doesn't bother everyone. But it is absolutely personal.

2) When we do get questions, we get the same questions all the time. To be
blunt, I get tired of answering them.

3) For my particular problems, I have a pile of symptoms and things that
trigger them, but no formal diagnosis of anything (even after years of
doctors). I just don't like to get into it because once people dig in, they
start trying to help. Try this herb, try this pill, see my doctor, etc. They
mean well. And they really think they are suggesting things I haven't already
done. But all it really does is rekindle old frustrations.

So everyone is different. Many people won't have my obvious bitterness from
#3. Some people are fine with questions. But you never know. We are all
different people. So I'd recommend not asking questions. But at the same time,
that doesn't mean to avoid the subject. There is a nice balance where you just
talk about the direct impact it has on the current situation without turning
it into a huge conversation. And if you get to know someone well enough, just
ask them directly if they mind questions.

------
megaman22
Is there a corresponding condition where you know faces, but cannot match them
to names?

~~~
djsumdog
That's called being in the majority of the entire human race.

------
IIAOPSW
I knew a guy with this. I also have a friend who looks rather like me.

One day we both sat down in class next to the face blind kid. Face blind kid
went out to the bathroom. lookalike and I swapped seats and exterior clothes
(jacket, watch etc). Hilarity ensues.

------
dgreensp
The author calls her face-blindness “mild” and “not as severe”; I wonder what
severe face-blindness entails?? How do you recognize less than the author?

I have a small bit of difficulty with faces that my ex-wife made me aware of.
Since then, if I don’t recognize someone I may say, “Sorry, I’m bit bad at
faces,” and this seems to go over well. I also sometimes say this to cut short
conversations about “who my kids look like.”

------
asfgionio
Is there a good test for this I could take (preferably online)? I suspect I
have a mild case and would like an objective test.

~~~
arthurdenture
"Famouse Faces" at [https://www.testmybrain.org](https://www.testmybrain.org)
and [http://facememory.psy.uwa.edu.au/](http://facememory.psy.uwa.edu.au/) are
both good.

~~~
henrikschroder
Cool. I scored 97% on the second one, and 14 on the first one.

I did cheat a little bit on the first one by looking up their names on IMDB,
because I can usually better remember which movie they were in and what role
they played, than the name of the actor.

~~~
arthurdenture
Wow. I scored 34% on the second one, i.e. no better than random guessing. The
last part that added the random noise to the faces didn't make a difference,
since I already couldn't do worse at the task.

~~~
henrikschroder
I have to admit though that a few of the model faces were a bit featureless
and hard to remember, so I mostly got those right by eliminating the other two
faces in each group of three, because the wrong faces usually had prominent,
memorable features.

The random noise made it harder, but if you squint and move your head around
while looking at it, you can remove a lot of noise, it's a nice little
"analog" trick for situations like that.

But 34%.. Do you think you suffer from prosopagnosia? Or was there something
with the test that made it extra hard for you?

~~~
arthurdenture
> Do you think you suffer from prosopagnosia?

I do.

I once watched Up in the Air and had to ask at the end which one was George
Clooney. (In my defense, I had previously seen him in Syriana, where he had a
beard. Hair and facial hair are the crutches I tend to use to recognize
people.) Needless to say, on the Famous Faces test I had trouble with anyone
less memorable than, say, Barack Obama.

