Also terrible with names.

I'm pretty wierd about recognizing people.  The first time I meet them, e.g. at a party, I'll recognize them almost entirely by hair and clothes.  The next time I see them, I've the damndest time placing them, and almost certainly can't remember their names.  Pretty girls with nice smiles are the exception to the rule.

After that it gets to be a total gestalt thing and eventually I can pick them out of a crowd, from behind, from posture, whatever.  But if I don't see them regularly for a long time, the name just goes out the window :(

Definitely does not run in the family.  My grandmother (79 this year) can pull up names of people that she's never met, friends of mine that I've mentioned in passing years earlier.  It's creepy.

It could be a total coincidence, but the things you're describing sound remarkably similar to some of the personal accounts of face blindness that I've read.

I think somebody (shane?) might have posted this as a quicklink already, but there's a test for face blindness put online by a research group at the University College, London. It tests how well you can a) identify celebrities, and b) recognize new faces based entirely on facial features, and then it tells you how well your abilities compare to the general population and to those with face blndness.

If face blindness is really a 1 in 50 shot then well, it might be worth taking that test. Y'know, I'm just sayin'...

When I took the test I came out average, right on the, uh, nose. Still, in the celebrities test, I was thinking "crap, that's whatsisface, the guy who was in Pulp Fiction... disco... that stupid movie with Nicholas Cage..." It's funny to realize how much you can depend on context and mannerisms for identifying people sometimes. I had to see probably seven or eight different movies with Sean Penn before I could recognize him on sight. I came to realize that this was partly because he didn't seem to have any "standard" mannerisms that scream "Look at me - I'm Sean Penn!" and carry over from role to role (unlike some actors, who seem to have refined their scowl or bashful smirk to the point where the gesture takes on a career of its own).

Another interesting thing I've begun to notice recently is that after knowing people for a while (talking non-celebrities, now), their body language starts to become a recognizable part of their identity, such that they're easy to spot even out of the corner of the eye. (this realization has probably had a lot to do with spending a good portion of the last year in a school computer lab, where the same people are always present, shuffling about from station to station, and often only visible out of the corner of the eye) Before reading about face blindness, I'd thought that this kind of recognition followed the same process as face or voice recognition. In all three of these experiences, it seems that the sequence of recognition goes: see/hear someone's "image", attach that image to a person, then make emotional associations to that person's identity. The interesting thing that this research into face blindness makes clear is that, at the very least, the connections between image and person are not the same from one type of recognition to the next. Along the lines of face blindness, I wonder what it would be like to be unable to identify voices or mannerisms.

-secretpath

Everything that needs to be said has already been said, but since no one was listening, we must begin again. -Andre Gide

Another interesting thing I've begun to notice recently is that after knowing people for a while (talking non-celebrities, now), their body language starts to become a recognizable part of their identity, such that they're easy to spot even out of the corner of the eye.

At work, there's one area with a long vista to the parking lot, and it's interesting how often I can recognize someone by their walk, 400 yards away.

CELEBRITY TEST: Results "Out of 30 faces, you correctly identified 30.You were familiar with 30 of the people in this test. If we exclude the ones you were unfamiliar with, you got 100% correct."

Just so you know how truly awesome I am, secretpath, getting 30 right meant identifying Rowen Atkinson and Patrick Stewart by face. Those two took me a few seconds.

This means Jojo is a celebrity whore and must now cancel her Star and UsWeekly subscriptions.

OLD FACES-NEW FACES TEST: Out of 20 target faces (ones you learned in the first part of this test), you correctly identified 20. Out of 30 nontarget faces (ones that you didn't learn in the first part of this test), you correctly responded that you had not seen 30 of them.

Interestingly enough -- and more seriously now --  I was able to recognize random strangers at 100% as well - on this test anyway.

I am truly curious why this is, because the results surprised even me.

My hypthesis: I think some people pay hyperclose attention to faces -- the slant of an eyebrow, the shape of a mouth, the curve of the jawline, the symmetry of the face. I was aware while doing this second test that as I looked at each random face, I was consciously searching for the one thing that made that person beautiful to me.

I am awesome AND shallow!.

I did far better than I expected on the 'new faces' test (didn't bother with the celebrity test), scoring 88%. Despite this I can rarely remember anybody's name unless they're a very long-term acquaintance.

I wonder if I have some defect related to the intersection of face recognition and language use or if I'm just way too disinterested in people.

tnt needs to track moderation. stats page!

I scored much better on celebrities than new faces.  Perhaps not coincidentally, I had trouble identifying the faces of celebrities who's work I'm not really into, like Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, and Jennifer Anistan.

Patrick Stewart I recognized instantly.  In fact, my heart rate increased slightly and I started hearing the ST:NG theme song.

On the new faces test I scored 57%, and I think luck had quite a bit to do with it.  Did they manipulate the face images somewhat?  A lot of them seemed a more assymetrical than is natural.

...Dwayne was hoping that he would pay exactly the right amount of attention to Francine's clitoris.

Actually I don't think it is about paying attention or not.  When a person sees a face there is a process circuit in the brain that says "WHOA THAT's a FACE" and it is then handled differently than any other thing that you see.   There is a special bit of circuitry in your brain and its only job is to handle faces.  If you are face-bind that ciruit isn't working.

So JoJo, yours is just working really good.  Probably even if you don't pay attention.

Yes, I agree if you have this condition is not about not paying attention, Shane -- you are right.

Maybe I should have said that I was actually TRYING to pay attention when taking this test. My point (and it was lost, even to me until you pointed it out) is that I may not try that hard in real life encounters with strangers. But I haven't met a test I haven't tried to ace.

Truth be told, I try not to pay attention to too many things, really. Jojo is easily distracted by shiny objects and pretty things...and has the attention span of a kitty cat.

comes from working in a nursing home: "You know the best thing about having Alzheimer's? You meet new people every day."
    Very dark humor, to be sure, but I can tell you that those places practically demand it, especially if you stick around for more than a year.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

For a while, my son appeared to think that there were two daddies: with and without glasses.  Then there was a brief period in which he realized that they were related, and he could turn four-eyed daddy into two-eyed daddy by tearing the glasses off my face.  So, that's one way babies deal with it.

We are past that stage, thank the gods.  Now he converts lazy daddy into active daddy by, say, jumping on my Powerbook.

Now he converts lazy daddy into active daddy by, say, jumping on my Powerbook.

My daughter does that by jumping on me.  She's figured out that knees first into the belly will get me moving almost everytime.

She did build a slide out of our laptop and a couch cushion.  

...Dwayne was hoping that he would pay exactly the right amount of attention to Francine's clitoris.