How well, or how long, do you need to know someone before you can reliably identify them? (For instance – spouse, parents, children – boss, teacher, neighbor – etc.)
Since I originally requested the OP, I’ll ask: Do you feel limited in career options because of this issue?
(BTW - I scored 86% on the face recognition test.)
A big part of the reason was that I had no idea anything was unusual until a few years ago.
If you grow up with one way of viewing something, and it never occurs to you or anyone else to share experiences of it because it’s so basic, how can you realize things are different for others?
When considering social struggle, I assumed I had difficulty only because of surface problems like clothing sense or basic appearance or voice: things that were possibly amenable to training or improvement.
It was only after the discovery of the possibility of face blindness that my counselor and I were able to work backwards and consider what effect it might have had on my early social relations. I always hung back because I was trying to figure out who people were before saying Hi. This was especially important if I needed to figure out whether any of them were going to attack me (I was bullied a lot ion senior public school). It may be that this gave other people an impression that I was aloof and unfriendly, or not interested in people. Did this lessen my chances in the social world? I suspect so.
A few months of frequent contact will give me an array of things to check off when figuring out who someone is, but rapid recognition is never trustworthy. As I mentioned before in the case of the woman in the blue sweater, combine a new context, new clothing, an unfamiliar hairstyle (I’d seen it before once), and insufficient time, and recognition fails. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve known anyone.
The general effect is something like being surrounded by an eternal costume ball. Everyone’s identity is obscured by a mask of varying opacity, and only the people I’ve known well have tramsparent masks that I can see through and see who they are. But that developer at work I met twice is a masked figure saying hi in the hall. And if the light reflects oddly off the mask of someone I’ve know for twenty years, I can’t see them either.
I just tried the face recognition test from the link. I got 47 %. I think I was okay in the first part, but in the section where you had to memorize six faces, I was basically picking almost randomly.
Boy, you must really, really suck at the “Find Mii” game for the Wii. 
(So sue me, we just got that game yesterday. Our kids (7 and 5) love that one.)
Not fully understanding the situation, so forgive me if I’m not “getting it”, but is it less of a problem with different races? Like, for example, if you had a picture of all the presidents on it (unlabelled, of course), would you have a much harder time picking out Nixon (say) than Obama because, well, Obama just really stands out in such a photo group. 
And would this be why you haven’t submitted your picture yet to the Doper picture thread? I for one am looking forward to seeing it! You always have interesting posts and I’d like to attach a face to the posts.
Any difference helps; the more obvious, the better. Though in Toronto we have such a mix that you are guaranteed to find more than one of any group in the average crowd. I belong to a cultural group that is outnumbered 50:1 by the local Tibetan population, for example.
Not sure whether this is addressed to me or the OP, but if it is to me, I submitted some pics yesterday. And thanks.
Somewhat better. Like faces, some voices are more distinctive than others. Sometimes they’ll help me out when I blank on a face.
No, I’m Doctor Woo. See below.
I don’t watch TV, and I don’t think anyone every mentioned it to me. Was it good?
Runs in the family. My father, grandfather, brother, and probably at least one uncle have it, which makes me suspect it’s an X-linked trait. (My mother, on the other hand, is one of those people who knows who she sat next to at a fundraising dinner three years ago).
I sometimes tell people who I meet at lunch or in the hall, because they don’t expect me to become best friends forever. That way, when they see me in the halls they reintroduce themselves, no awkwardness or hard feelings. If I’ll be seeing them a lot, I worry that I’ll offend them by implying that they’re not memorable.
I don’t need to tell my close friends, unless they’re introducing me to someone else.
Everyone’s me, but I think I’m you. I have trouble with movies because I can’t keep track of which character is which.
Like I said above, I’m worried that I’ll offend people by implying that they’re forgettable. And sometimes I’m just in a class with them or something, and they assume I know them even if I’ve never spoken to them.
It depends. Like I said above, I can tell my nuclear family and close friends without a problem. If I hang out with someone a lot, I’ll at least know them in context.
If I don’t see someone for a significant length of time, I forget their face. (It isn’t as bad as meeting someone for the first time, because I have a familiar name to peg on the face).
I don’t want to work with people in any case. Er, that is, I don’t want to work with the public. If I’m a zookeeper I’ll just have to figure out the other people. I volunteered at a local zoo for a short time, and I managed to learn several names. If I’m a research biologist, even if it’s a large company, I’ll probably deal with a small group of people on a regular basis.
Richard Nixon is fairly distinctive, even to me. But race is a big help, in the same way that dyeing your hair magenta would help. At the school caf, I quickly got to know one of the cashiers because he’s one of the few white people working there (and because he wears a pony tail, and he’s really friendly). Actually, I can differentiate shades of brown skin better than other races.
The reason I haven’t posted a photo is because it’s one of my basic Internet safety rules. I admit, I’m less careful than I could be, but I haven’t compromised on the no-face thing so far. I would have to blur or cut out my face, and you probably want faces.
It was fine, I guess. I mean, the show was not exactly appointment television, but I don’t know why it got yanked after just three episodes. Plenty of truly awful shows get a longer leash.
Huh. Just seems like getting offended at a diabetic not being able to eat cake I made.
Sunspace - I can see that, not knowing that other people didn’t have the same trouble with faces.
I will admit, although intellectually I understand the explanation I am having a hard time imagining the experience because it’s so far from my norm.
Do you remember seeing the face before (to some degree), but not remember the name?
If I’m lucky, I may think, “That person reminds me of X”, but I won’t be certain that is is X.
Edit: I should add that this has nothing to do with how clearly I see the face. Put my glasses or contacts on and I can see as well as anyone. It’s a lot more subtle that that. I just don’t perceive that the person is the friend I’ve known for years.
Sometimes. Just this afternoon when I was typing my previous reply, a girl came over to me and said, “Hi, you remember who I am?” (this was obviously one of the people I told about my handicap). I hazarded a guess that she was in one of my classes (okay, not such a long shot, but she did look/sound familiar) and she confirmed that she was in Psych with me.
I’m sorry for your disability. I remember seeing a documentary on memory, and there were two extremes, one a woman who remembered EVERYTHING and could recite it back to you, and another an older man who couldn’t remember ANYTHING. He had a researcher coming to his house every day and had to be introduced to her each day.
That said, I can understand your shyness and not wanting to tell everyone about your disability, but as you said, most people are nice, so why not give them a shot? They may be more forthcoming in helping you, so you won’t feel like you can’t have a social life.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Great link! As a data point, I scored 90% without trying to identify any distinguishing characteristics. That is, I just trusted my facial processing center. Also, I’m a generic white dude, so…
Me too - I’ve always been good at reconizing faces, even if I’ve met the person once. I’ll remember a face long before I’ll remember a name, and got a 93% on the face-recognition quiz linked to above.
This thread is really interesting to me, since it’s so different from my own experience.
That was facinating. I got 75% on the first (CGI) test, mostly because I could construct mnemonics about each face, like this one’s a boxer, this one’s really tall, this one works at the opera, etc. Still I found it really hard, but apparently I’m not as prosopagnosic as I thought I was. Especially since I was able to score 90% on the famous people test.
Huh… I alway thought I was pretty prosopagnosic. I can’t find even long time friends in a crowd, and meeting someone unexpectedly in a different context throws me off recognizing them.
I guess my problem is more around names…
I forgot to mention, but I have a much harder time telling men apart than women. I don’t know if it’s because there’s less variation in hairsyles and clothing, or itf it’s just a kind of “All those people look alike” syndrome.
In eighth grade, after six long years of struggle, I was able to name every girl in my grade. Just in time for graduation. But I think I only could pick out a handful of boys.
Scored 65% on the face test.
Same here.
Did everybody have a much harder time when there was that colored fuzz in the second group, or was that just me?
No. I’m tone-deaf and generally can’t recognize voices.
Celebrity recognizer? 14%. And that’s of the ones I actually knew the names of.
They hid the hair! How could I know it was Princess Diana without the hair? Ironically, I would have gotten Sylvester Stallone right if I hadn’t second-guessed myself.
Weird, I would say I am terrible at recognizing faces but I scored 92% on the test but I admit there were a few times I wasn’t sure so I guessed. I got 93% on the celebrity one.
I have a really hard time recognizing people if they change their hair, get older or I just haven’t seen them in a long time. I guess I just have a plain old bad memory.