Face Blindness Realizations

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My wife was reading a great article about aphantasia the other day (its the inability to see something with the minds eye, to visualize or imagine how things appear), she asked me if I had the ability to imagine the way things looked. Of course I did, (not knowing there was an alternative), I'm an artist... so... obviously.

How could someone FUNCTION without that?

Our conversation looped around to different things until I ended up taking an online quiz about aphantasia that had a couple questions I answered "no" to instead of an obvious yes... and I made a shocking discovery about myself.

I'm somewhat faceblind... which is not the discovery, I've known that most of my life, even before I knew it was a thing that had a name. I identify people by a number of factors, and while, if I'm looking at you, I can tell its you (sometimes you might need to talk first)... but...

This quiz asked me about places I've been or imagined, and if I could see them clearly... and yeah... down to the details on the gravel loosely gathered at the corner of the sidewalk...

I can't visualize my wife's face... or my son...

Thats not right! I proclaim, before stumbling on the WEIRDEST part... I totally have this image of my wife in my head when she cut her hair... or my son as a baby peeking out of a cardboard box.

Then I realized those are ACTUAL IMAGES... I remember, in detail, what my wife and son look like in pictures because I can remember the pictures, not the moments.

A few days ago I passed a woman on the street, she had stupefyingly beautiful eyes. I stared longer than I should have because I was disarmed. It is a bit embarrassing to say because I don't tend to react like that, but I just got lost for a moment. These were probably the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen.

Eventually she passed me, and I was on my way again. It only took several seconds for me to lose my perception of her. I have no idea what she looked like. I couldn't tell you why I thought her eyes were beautiful. I can't imagine what I saw, literally.

I've been discovering some other really cool but potentially REALLY mental personality bits associated with this, as well as some personal insight into things like being able to read expressions... and I wondered what our fair community thinks?

Are you faceblind? Can you remember faces when they aren't in front of you (at different levels of importance, too... I THINK I can remember my mom's face from right before she passed... I think I can remember my dad's face... I get momentary flashes of other peoples faces but I can't hold them)...

Share your feelings, I wanna know!

That's really interesting; I'm right now realising that when I think of the faces of anyone I know, I'm referring to particular photographs I've seen of them. I CAN seem to picture a potato-basic 3d model of the shape of their skulls though?

I have faceblindness but it tends to be contextual- if I see someone I know in a context in which I am familiar with them I can recognise them. Otherwise I can't unless they have a distinguishing feature I can pick up on. This may sound rude but it's the only way I can recognise people.

I think I have mild prosopagnosia, the medical term for face blindness. I recognize familiar faces but, occasionally, I'll draw a blank on the faces of casual acquaintances. In the case of famous people, I know them much more for what they have done than by how they look. I took the face recognition test and scored better than I thought I would, but still not spectacular.

Once when watching an old TV episode, I mixed up a dead character with several live characters because of this faceblindness. I was confused about who died for most of the episode (it was a murder mystery).

In my defense that character was a woman, and almost all the female characters in the episode were white, slim, and had similar hair colour.

I recently found out that I have Prosopagnosia. I always thought it was strange that people could remember me so easily despite the changes in dress and body shape. I realize now that if someone asked me to draw my family's faces or describe them I couldn't even being to, much less people I meet casually.

Interesting things for face-blind people to do --
lip read
draw faces
pareidolia