Des anyone else have trouble recognizing faces?

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I've wondered how common this is. I tend not to recognize faces, yes, perhaps because I tend not to look at faces. I recognize people more readily in in contexts, when they're in an identifiable place or situation. But if I encounter someone on the street and they say hello, I may wrack my brain to figure out who this is, even if I know them well. This has caused some terribly awkward moments, especially in younger years when I didn't understand my weakness. I suppose we'll soon have glasses that will recognize people on our behalf and give us a clue..."Hey, that's Joe Blow; his birthday was 2 days ago and he lives down the block", that sort of thing.

Prosopagnosia high-five!

I too am face blind. I identify people mainly by hair and voices.

It is common but...


I don't have the trouble of recognizing faces and distinguish in-between.
I have the trouble of remembering faces that looked it's easy to mistake it for trouble of recognizing faces. More like I don't pay attention to faces and it's subtleties to bother knowing the differences let alone to recall then recognize later.

I don't have prosopagnosia and I don't have facial and visual processing issues. Yet I 'behave' as if I have it.

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I can recognize faces of people who I know well. But with new people, I struggle a lot. I am embarrassed to point it out to other people. I have heard that humans perceive faces differently in general, so I guess this is just an extreme case.

Yes, I have this problem too. I didn't even realize it was a "thing" until I joined this forum. I cannot visualize faces even for people I know well. I recognize people only in context.

"Face blindness" IS a thing. Though I never heard of it before I joined WP. And apparently its a common thing among autistics. Though I am not among the autistics with that condition. There have been many threads about it over the years (see the "related topics" listed at the bottom of the page).

One WP person said he had trouble telling Sulu from Checkov in Sixties Star Trek. At first glance that seems insane to most of us because those two characters were not even of the same race. But when you think about it: they were both young males about the same age, both had dark hair, and both had similar haircuts (with bangs), on top of wearing identical star fleet uniforms. So its actually kinda remarkable that most of could tell them apart instantly at a distance. Shows how most folks are wired to zero in on facial features even though a human face is usually a quite small part of the visual landscape. Some folks seem to lack that vital specialized brain circuitry that instinctively zeros in on faces.

There was a rather weird sidebar to this.

Back a few years ago there was a fad theory that autistics are autistics because they inherited genes from Neanderthals. Seems to have gone out of fashion since then. There is a certain logic to it, but precious little evidence for it, and considerable evidence against it.

But I did run across a website at that time that claimed that there was a study done on autistic children. And that the study showed that autistic children were better at recognizing Neanderthal faces than modern human faces (had less face blindness), and also the kids said that they found "Neanderthal faces to be more beautiful" than the faces of modern humans. Reminded me of the children in the "Village of the Damned" movie. But it was late and I had to be at work at six am the next day. So I forgot about the article.

Months later I thought about the above "study", and began to wonder "who did this study, where was it published,and who peer reviewed it?" I didn't recall seeing that information. And ..WTF? How could they show living people (children or adults) pictures of "Neanderthal faces" anyway? If the guy who ran the website had meant that "they showed the children artists' conceptions of what Neanderthal faces may have looked like (ie skulls fleshed out with hair etc) then he should have stated that. But I don't recall him making that explanatory statement. So I searched the web again and actually found that article on the web a second time. None of the above issues were explained. It was associated with a website created by a guy who is clearly a White racists with axes to grind. And the site did not cite any sources for this account he posted about this "study". Apparently he made the whole thing up. It would be kinda cool if it were true, that living autistic children had some kind of frozen in amber memory of Neanderthal times in their heads, and that autistics who are face blind are not really faceblind, but just face blind to modern human faces. But I seriously doubt that that is the case.

Living with faceblindness means that one is overclingy especially when young. As one gets older, one loses all (Or nearly all) the ones one aas in school with. One loses other friends too. They may puzzle why one has not said "Hello" to them and assume that they don't want to be friends anymore.
Living with faceblindness means one will often become highly embarissed to the point that if one sees someone one thinks one knows, one does not want to take the risk by approaching the person incase one has got it wrong and is speaking to a complete stranger!
One is also embarissed through other events, like when I used to have a house, which was at the end of a terrace on a hill, the next doors house was owned by an elderly couple. They were not there often so I, and the other neighbours would keep an eye and do little tasks... Like mow their lawn etc. They only had a little lawn so it was easy. Then one day I saw a man on the roof but I did not have time to do anything as it could be innocent. The person was near the window but they were not trying to break in.
Then another occasion I was chatting to the guy living 3 doors down. I said we need to be careful because there was someone on the roof the other day.
"THAT WAS ME!" he said. I didn't know! He often did little jobs for people. He looked at me daft like I was trying to accuse him of something.
I have had many such moments like that in my life. Highly embarissing.

Yes!

Two potential partial solutions:

1. "I'm faceblind and have trouble recognizing faces. May I take a picture of you so that I can remember your face? Make a funny face!" And then label the photos by texting them to yourself, emailing them to yourself, pasting them into a document.

2. Mnemonics. "Sarah wears Scarves." "Tracy is Tall."