Prosopagnosia: how many of you have it?

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I can ace those face blind tests because they don't move. If they moved, changed expressions, changed their hair, changed their angle of view, were put into a crowd of different people, were reintroduced several minutes later after seeing a whole bunch of other faces, then NO I would not be able to pass the test.

The celebrities test is always easy for me because I've seen many photos of those celebrities over the many years I've been around and have been able to imprint them in memory because of the sheer overexposure of them in print and in movies. I can do a short term memory test of faces, but insert a considerable length of time between exposures, that is like asking me to tell one tree from another, which is another thing I cannot do.

I cannot tell ordinary people apart. Everyday, ordinary people who resemble most other people. In fact, I can walk down a street and almost everyone looks like someone I remember meeting somewhere at some time. I just can't remember who they are!

My neighbor shaved and I didn't recognize him until he spoke (I am pretty good at voices).

I used to get in trouble with guys for talking to them once and then "ignoring" them on the street. I don't ever remember doing this-- there were 40,000 undergrads at my college and unless them spoke,or wore some distinctive article of clothing I didn't recognize them.

I once walked by my own daughter sitting on a park bench-- walking back and forth past the bench for 5 or 10 minutes, wondering who the strange young woman was and where my daughter had gone. I had left her there while I went to get some ice for her twisted ankle; in the five minutes I was gone she had taken off her jacket and glasses. I did not recognize her until she spoke.

Ya think I'm face-blind???

I remember watching a movie that didn't make sense at all to me until I discussed it with a friend and realized that Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon were two different people . Or confusing two guys my first week at a new school because they were both curly-haired. Once I get to know someone I don't have trouble differentiating them though, I even have a knack for differentiating twins (assuming I know well at least one of them, of course)

I did very well in the online tests, but in real life, I have a hard time--for example, I saw a woman in the train station and knew from the way she was looking at me that we knew each other, but I had no idea who she was. Then I thought because of her hair color and overall body shape that she might be the mother of my daughter's best friend... But I could not be sure. I just gave her a smile and got back to looking at my iPad and hoped I had not offended her. Late I asked my wife if I had made the right identification and from a few details in my description, she was able to identify her as another person who looks similar to the person I guessed she was.

I have trouble in some movies, like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy--because I loose track of characters when there are a lot of them, but not so much trouble with others, when there are fewer main characters or the flow is not so complicated.