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“Coming Out” as Face Blind
- make3 9y agoVery 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 9y agoThat sounds like a much better solution than google glass, and one that we could even build in a weekend.
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- make3 9y agothe 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 9y agoI 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.
- asfgionio 9y agoI think it would be harder than that. Bear in mind that this will use images of moving targets from strange angles in poor lighting. Is there any system that works that well, even out of something like Facebook or Google? Plus this has to be portable and battery-operated. I know nothing about computer vision.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoI 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
- rectang 9y agoThe 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_prosopagnosia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_with_prosopagn...
- Improvotter 9y agoWow Steve Wozniak, never expected to see him on there.
- megaman22 9y agoIs there a corresponding condition where you know faces, but cannot match them to names?
- jdeisenberg 9y agoYou aren’t alone. My face recognition is spotty: I had two students in different classes; both same height, white hair, mustaches -- and it took me six weeks to tell them apart. I have a decent memory for student names. However, the face recognition and name memory parts of my brain don’t talk to one another.
- djsumdog 9y agoThat's called being in the majority of the entire human race.
- petercooper 9y agoThe 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.
- 13of40 9y agoI'm a little face blind and a little name blind, so one trick I've used for years is to ask someone to remind me of their email address. (How do you spell your alias again?)
- lathiat 9y agoI’ve heard a similar trick about asking for their name but then saying oh I meant your last name.
- wpietri 9y agoHah! One of my tricks is to introduce people. "Hey, have you two met?" Often they haven't, so they'll then say their names.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoThe standard format in the UK for an introduction is usually considered something like: 1 : have you two met? (2, 3 indicate no) 1 to 2 : this is 3, she's a number too 1 to 3 : this is 2, he's prime I guess it depends on local factors.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYou try to aim for an informal introduction. Get two people close together, nudge them towards each other, say the "have you two ever met?" line, and just leave it to them to exchange greetings.
- _Marak_ 9y agoOn 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 9y agointeresting. 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 9y agoYep, 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.
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- kafquaesque 9y agoI’m pretty sure I’m close to at least eighty percent recall in person(the online tests are questionable). I used to creep people out growing up by walking up to them and saying “Hi,” after seeing/meeting them once. It took me until college to realize I was even doing it. I’m terrible with names though. You can tell me your name three times and there’s a chance I will not remember it. I would rather be somewhat good at both than really good at one and bad at the other. Not saying they are necessarily linked—but remebering the face without the name can get awkward. I have learned to repeat the name in conversation and try to link it with an object, color of clothing, or something distinctive. My mother oddly is extremely bad with faces—almost to the point it seems like she is face blind. Which is odd considering how good at it I am. She has a hard time interpreting faces in movies and as a result seems to have a hard time following the narrative.
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- recollectorrr 9y agoYou 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 9y agoPlease note: facial recognition is learned, not innate. https://www.leafscience.org/visual-recognition/ https://www.leafscience.org/visual-recognition/ Thanks.
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- asfgionio 9y agoIs 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 9y ago"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 9y agoCool. 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.
- icebraining 9y agoSame here, I knew exactly who they were, but had to look up most names :|
- henrikschroder 9y agoI would simply guess that that's two different skills, and very few people are great at both, so I don't feel bad about it. :-)
- arthurdenture 9y agoWow. 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 9y agoI 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?
- siliconc0w 9y agoI 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.
- IIAOPSW 9y agoI 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.
- djsumdog 9y agoI 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 9y agoI 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.
- throwaway84742 9y agoI 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.
- xevb3k 9y agoWhat if the other person is bad at videoconferenes? I find them extremely awkward compared to talking face to face, and I know some people find them very distracting.
- throwaway84742 9y agoI’m sure some other mode of communication could be used. Email is fine for most things, TBH. In some cases I’m ok with stopping by in person, at my own expense.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoYou 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 9y agoProbably not. I’m perfectly fine with audiobooks, for example.
- lisper 9y agoI 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.
- xupybd 9y agoSorry 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?
- Baeocystin 9y agoDon't ever feel bad about honest curiosity due to wanting to understand another. Some people won't want to talk about things, and that's ok. Accept and move on. But most people will, and it is not rude to, at the very least, ask if it is ok to ask. If someone gets offended at even that level of question, that's on them, not you.
- klokoman 9y agoDon't worry, if you read the article well and then read her other article you'll see what kind of person she is and why she comes up with that conclusion. You are probably wise enough to know when it's socially appropriate to ask questions, so go on.
- codingdave 9y agoIt 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.
- dgreensp 9y agoThe 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.”
- creep 9y agoI 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.
- 205guy 9y agoI 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.