How to recognise people better?

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I am getting increasing frustrated by difficulties recognising people and want to find out how to improve this. Any ideas? What has helped other people?

I currently try to use a feature that is unusual (such as hair, clothes, height, weight etc). However I cant remember faces of people that I dont know really, really well. My current methods for recognising people are inadequate and causing problems and a lot of stress.

Example: today I got a ride with someone to an event. As soon as we entered the room with other people I became unable to recognise the person I came with. I then had to figure out from other people what the person I came with looked like as I was getting a ride home with him too.

Example: Yesterday I was at a shop talking to one of the sales assistants. His co-worker was next to him. Both left to go to the back room and one of them returned. I saw a person return from the backroom, and looked at him to identify whether he was the co-worker or the one I was dealing with. My brain was totally confused by the face and couldnt identify who I was looking at until he sat down in the co-workers seat and suddenly I recognised him. This is bearing in mind each worker had a different build, skin tone, facial hair, hair colour and length, face shape, glasses etc. I am perplexed by my inability to make sense of what I was seeing and how it snapped into place as soon as he sat in the co-workers chair.

Example: I have joined a group and after 3 months I can only recognise 3/30 people (face and name) - however they all know me and I'm expected to now know them.

Any suggestions of better strategies or approaches for recognising people? Are there things I can do/practice/learn? Or is this something I'm stuck with?

I have trouble with that, too. You could take notes of what they look like but that could change. It's especially hard with women. They keep changing their hair color, styles and fashion. Put a pair of sunglasses on and a new coat, then I don't know my next door neighbor again. Usually I just say hi to everyone who looks familiar, but don't use names, unless I'm really sure.

We're good friends with our neighbor across the street, but the dude is a very typical looking white male with a very typical name and wears typical clothes. I'm sure I wouldn't know him if he's not standing in front of his house. My husband is pretty typical looking, too and I can't be sure it's him outside our home unless he's within a few feet. That improved a bit since he grew his hair long and I started buying him brightly colored clothes, made him less typical.

Unfortunately you can't control what other people wear unless you're their mom or wife. I just make do with smiling, nodding or say hi to a whole bunch of people everyday. You can try using your phone to take pictures of people and put their names and other into under it to remind yourself. But it's hard to do that discreetly.

I'd be interested to know the answer to this as well. I don't understand how I can meet someone new, and even meet them again a couple of times more, and still not remember their face. I remember someone telling me he thought it was lack of eye contact, but my eye contact is fairly constant, if not a little strange.

I even avoid talking to people I've spoken to before, or who I *think* I've spoken to before, because I don't want to appear strange in case I've mistaken them for another. That's really annoying.

One strategy I use is to look at their photo, repeatedly. You might be able to look up someones profile on a company website. Then you can properly observe their photo and note their facial features better. Another I use is to notice defects, as defects are easier to recognise (which I'm fairly good at anyway, being a pefectionist) like spots in a particular place on their face, or the yellowness of their teeth. Some people have yellow showing more on the sides of their teeth than the front, as a result of a lack of brushing. Teeth can be very individual - their alignment, pointedness, roughness, gaps, length - more individual than skin or face shape. I notice eyebrow shapes as well. In the end, everybody looks very different to me, but only after I've met them a few times. Otherwise, a lot of people look the same.

Did anyone find that it's easier to recognize kids than adults? Probably because they don't dye their hair or wear makeup? Or maybe their facial features are closer together? It's weird and hard to explain. It's like children look all distinctive and colorful, and once they reach puberty they all lose their bright colors and become grey or beige. I can tell the name of most of the kids in my sons' classes, but I can't tell the names of their parents or teachers easily. I'm only sure about the parents' names if they're with their kids.

I go by voice, but obviously that's not a perfect solution.

I also have this problem. If you don't have access to some kind of who-is-who with pictures, try this: contact the persons (at work) by phone and try to memorize their voice and speaking style. This way you would know a) their name b) the department / area where they can be found most likely. Next time you meet this person you will have a chance to recognize them by voice. If not, just go to their department and ask 'Which of you is ...?' 'Oh, so I spoke to you!'. If she/he is not there at the moment, ask the others where their seat is! Next time when you sneak in the place for whatever reason, look for the person in the seat first...

So there isnt a way to directly improve recognition of faces but this can be compensated for by trying to remember other features instead?

I guess it's concentrating at both outstanding facial features and other features, which include (but not limited to) specs, hair style (shape, color, length), ears, clothing style, voice, speaking style, gait, body (size, height, pose). It's true that the more average looking is someone the more difficult to remember or distinguish form other average looking persons. How am I supposed to explain them that I don't remember them because for me they're looking 'average'?

When I started at my current workplace I was in trouble (and occasionally still am) learning to recognize coworkers and their names. I've been laughed at or smiled at many times because of it, even if those expressions were basically friendly I felt stupid and humiliated. I did what I described in detail in the above post to get over the worst of it.

Oh, I've reread and see I haven't answered your question.

I've just read in Temple Grandin's book Thinking In Pictures that there's probably a different brain subsystem for recognizing faces than the subsystem that responsible for recognizing shapes and features (e.g. of a building) from the raw data provided by the eyes. So, if the former is impaired, there's no direct way to improve it, only indirect. Brain plasticity is a known phenomenon, though, so it's always possible to improve the difficulties.

Prosopagnosia



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia


TheSunAlsoRises

Thanks, that and your other posts are really helpful.

@TheSunAlsoRises thanks for the link, its good to know the name