Is this face blindness?

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Scenario 1 - I'll be walking along, usually with a mixture of looking around with vague interest and thinking about whatever happens to be on my mind at the time, when someone calls my name. Suddenly there is someone right in front of me, and I have to look for a few seconds before I realise it's someone I see all the time (mostly, my downstairs neighbour). If she hadn't called me by name and thus indicated that she is someone peripherally connected with me, I would likely have walked right past and not seen her at all. Or, perhaps, I have done. This poor woman probably thinks I'm a prick who just ignores her and doesn't bother to say hello, but I truthfully don't see her even if she's right in front of me, until I'm alerted to who she is.
Scenario 2 - someone at a group, again calls me by name and from his manner assumes casual familiarity with me, and I can't remember by looking at him if we had even spoken before.
Scenario 3 - attending another group, I am talking to a woman I don't recall seeing before, until I look at her wrist and see a few strings of thread I recognise and realise I had spoken to her only the previous week, but it's the threads around her wrist, not her face, that reminds me we have encountered each other.
I never thought I had face blindness because I can recognise faces, especially if I had a particular reason to, like the person struck me in a particularly outstanding way. I can connect faces with names in these scenarios and would recall that person's face enough to recognise them again. I don't have any complete inability to recognise people. But this weird disconnect on not immediately seeing or recognising people makes me wonder if it's a mild form of face blindness.
For those of you face blind, can you describe it? Anything like the above? Are you able to recognise people at all, or how does this work?

It would seem to fit the definition. My wife has face blindness to a great degree. But, I wonder if that's because she grew up in an extremely homogeneous culture. She really only has trouble with non-Chinese faces. Black faces give her the worst problem. Actually had to prove to her that Della Reese was not a man once.

But, it would seem you do have a bit of face blindness. Especially since you recognize the other things (pieces of string and things like that) instead of the person or face.

I sometimes don't recognize people if they put on or take off a hat, or if they change their hairstyle, or if they take off or put on a uniform.

I don't think I have face blindness, but what you are describing sounds like it to me.

I have trouble recognizing faces of people I don't know, if that makes sense. It's hard for me to differentiate men's faces because they often all have similar haircuts or clothing. I can get confused easily when watching movies if the characters are too similar in appearance.

Believe it or not, even though I'm white, I seem to have trouble differentiating white faces the most.

I have most difficulty distinguishing East Asian faces (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc).

I read somewhere that we are best able to distinguish the faces of whatever race or ethnicity we grew up with the most.

So I think not being able to distinguish the faces of people of other races as well as your own is probably normal for most people.

I grew up with primarily European-descended people until about the age of 11.

After that age, I've had considerable contact with people of African heritage.

Until the 1990s, people of Asian heritage were "exotic" to me.

Have you researched "Yi Ge Ren" yet?

If you're talking about differentiating between them when seeing them, well, they can't either. There is no real difference in most faces. Unless it's something pronounced (Squarer heads, more pronounced jaw) it's like trying to differentiate between a UK person and a Russian. And, as their nutritional standards have been raised, you're also seeing changes in the traditional body types as well. China has a growing obesity epidemic, so there goes the waif like image of elegantly long ladies in Mandarin dresses. They still dress in traditional clothes for 'dress up' occasions, just ain't so waif like anymore for a lot of people.

I can't seem to tell most of the kids at my high school apart, regardless of their skin colour. *shrug*

If an Asian person was born and raised in a place like Vietnam, they tend to be around my height on average (5 foot 5).

If this person was born here, or came here when quite young, there's a tendency for the person to be much taller--very close to the white/black average--5 foot 9.

Same with people of Mexican heritage--especially if they have Native American backgrounds (though they tend to be even shorter).

I found a song, but do not know if it is the one to which you were referring. It has singing, and I think you said it was an instrumental piece.

You know what? It might have had singing, come to think of it!

Maybe I researched too quickly!

I can usually tell if someone is Japanese. They look very different to me. Chinese people have so much variation so they can look so different from one another. Koreans I don't see too often so I don't know.

Southeast Asians look completely different to me, including Vietnamese, although I know many have Chinese ancestry so it's not really that easy.

I spend a lot of time analyzing faces of people because I like anthropology. I see a lot of differences in European faces as well and like to try to guess an actor's ancestry when watching tv, and then I go research online to see if I'm correct.

Yes, I know it's weird.

Nothing weird about that!

I'm interested in anthropology, too--but not really as much in faces as you are.

Huh...I looked it up when Kraftie mentioned it. I think we got different results LOL...I found something about an online dictionary. http://dictionary.hantrainerpro.com/chi ... ealone.htm

But, I now find the song. Oddly, due to the context in which a person may use those words, it can mean "I am alone" or "I am one person". Or. my Mandarin is not as good as I hoped if I am mistaken LOL