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For a while now I have been suspecting I might have some degree of prosopagnosia, so I have been paying more attention to how and if I recognise people - trying to determine if it is indeed a quality I possess and to what extent.
Right now, this post is being written because having just seen The Dark Knight I am reading up on it at Wikipedia and found it quite amusing to discover Rachel Dawes was played by a different actor to the one who played her in Batman Begins. During her first scene, you see, I identified the character right away. My first thought was that this was due to knowing her profession and matching her with the female person prominently featured on screen during the early court scene, but quickly wondered if I actually recognised her face from having rewatched Batman Begins the night before.
Apparently not. Can anyone tell me if Katie Holmes and Maggie Gyllenhaal look similar to each other or if Maggie Gyllenhaal was much made up to look like the Rachel Dawes Katie Holmes portrayed originally?
From observing myself over the past several months I have noticed my identification of people often seems to depend on hair, voice, body and motion, and accessories such as glasses. A lot of the time I am not even looking at a person's facial features when trying to identify them, even if going by details of their head region.
Recognising people does not seem to be a serious difficulty for me, although this may seem easier than it actually is because everyone in my life currently has a specific context in which I expect to see them. If things change - like, say, parking on the opposite side of the street than the one I am used to for picking me up - I tend to make mistakes like trying to get into a stranger's car.
Several months previously I tried a couple of tests at http://www.faceblind.org/. One was a celebrity recognition test and I am not someone who pays much attention to pop-cultural celebrities so I only marked fifteen of the people presented as familiar. Of those, only 40% of my guesses were correct. Of a second test on this site, I obtained the following result:
This agrees with my self-assessment - I have difficulty recognising faces, but not severe so.
For comparison, right after taking these tests I asked![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lost_angelwings to try them too. She recognised 29 out of the 30 celebrity faces and 69% on the other test, or 50 out of 72.
My ability to recognise faces appears to function erratically, so that at times I might recognise a person easily and at others may not be able to see this at all. As yet I do not understand what factors might influence my ability to recognise a person on other occasions, although consistency of appearance does seem to be a major one. Frex, prior to watching Sean of the Dead I knew in advance that Dylan Moran had a role. In his first scene I recognised him easily enough, drinking at a bar. His second scene, at the apartment, I had no idea he was in until later in the movie when I realised that was the same character.
For a relatively long while I have been aware difficulty with faces is commonplace among autistic spectrum people. I have not yet seen anything to suggest this difficulty should be regarded as like or unlike prosopagnosia on its own, so I intend to keep using the term for now.
Right now, this post is being written because having just seen The Dark Knight I am reading up on it at Wikipedia and found it quite amusing to discover Rachel Dawes was played by a different actor to the one who played her in Batman Begins. During her first scene, you see, I identified the character right away. My first thought was that this was due to knowing her profession and matching her with the female person prominently featured on screen during the early court scene, but quickly wondered if I actually recognised her face from having rewatched Batman Begins the night before.
Apparently not. Can anyone tell me if Katie Holmes and Maggie Gyllenhaal look similar to each other or if Maggie Gyllenhaal was much made up to look like the Rachel Dawes Katie Holmes portrayed originally?
From observing myself over the past several months I have noticed my identification of people often seems to depend on hair, voice, body and motion, and accessories such as glasses. A lot of the time I am not even looking at a person's facial features when trying to identify them, even if going by details of their head region.
Recognising people does not seem to be a serious difficulty for me, although this may seem easier than it actually is because everyone in my life currently has a specific context in which I expect to see them. If things change - like, say, parking on the opposite side of the street than the one I am used to for picking me up - I tend to make mistakes like trying to get into a stranger's car.
Several months previously I tried a couple of tests at http://www.faceblind.org/. One was a celebrity recognition test and I am not someone who pays much attention to pop-cultural celebrities so I only marked fifteen of the people presented as familiar. Of those, only 40% of my guesses were correct. Of a second test on this site, I obtained the following result:
Out of 72 faces, you correctly identified 42.
In other words, you got 58% correct.
On our previous version of this test, the average person with normal face recognition was able to recognize about 80% of the faces. If you correctly identified less than 65% of the faces, this may indicate face recognition difficulties.
This agrees with my self-assessment - I have difficulty recognising faces, but not severe so.
For comparison, right after taking these tests I asked
lost_angelwings to try them too. She recognised 29 out of the 30 celebrity faces and 69% on the other test, or 50 out of 72.My ability to recognise faces appears to function erratically, so that at times I might recognise a person easily and at others may not be able to see this at all. As yet I do not understand what factors might influence my ability to recognise a person on other occasions, although consistency of appearance does seem to be a major one. Frex, prior to watching Sean of the Dead I knew in advance that Dylan Moran had a role. In his first scene I recognised him easily enough, drinking at a bar. His second scene, at the apartment, I had no idea he was in until later in the movie when I realised that was the same character.
For a relatively long while I have been aware difficulty with faces is commonplace among autistic spectrum people. I have not yet seen anything to suggest this difficulty should be regarded as like or unlike prosopagnosia on its own, so I intend to keep using the term for now.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 13:13 (UTC)From:Your experiences with prosopagnosia are interesting. I once worked with young people with autism and made the mistake of having my hair coloured during the working week, causing some of the young people real recognition problems. I soon learned that rule one was to inform of upcoming changes in advance :o)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 22:38 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 13:35 (UTC)From:A theory - difficulty looking at people's faces unless very comfortable with them may easily lead to trouble remembering what they look like (also, I forget anyway but that may be a cause...)
...
Out of 30 faces, you correctly identified 4.
You were familiar with 17 of the people in this test.
If we exclude the ones you were unfamiliar with, you got 24% correct.
....mostly American, I note. Heh, I got George Bush wrong.
Out of 72 faces, you correctly identified 42.
In other words, you got 58% correct.
AJhjdfhsjf they ALL LOOK THE SAME. Except for the hooked-eyebrows guy...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 15:52 (UTC)From:The 2nd test was so confusing! I have such a horrible short term memory I had a lot of trouble remembering what I was supposed to keep track of D: But in general I am pretty good with faces :o I think :\
no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 16:42 (UTC)From:In other words, you got 72% correct.
I was consciously aware of a lot of the data I was analyzing, too, although one of the faces fell out of my memory. Pretty sure I did well on the first bit, decent on the second, and mediocre on the third portion :)
I'm also the one who reassures everyone that yes, Dr. Horrible is the same person as the guy in the laundry room, though, so this is not a huge surprise. I seem to have some memory issues but no real "blindness."
no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 22:14 (UTC)From:Mostly, when taking that test, I held on to a few distinctive features - chin, wide cheeks, that sort of thing - and used them as an anchor to recognise a few of them and guess at the rest. Certainly I did better than chance, although this did not seem likely at the time.
Perhaps another time and watching closer.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-12 17:31 (UTC)From:Out of 72 faces, you correctly identified 53.
In other words, you got 74% correct.
And for the celebrities:
Out of 30 faces, you correctly identified 22.
You were familiar with 27 of the people in this test.
If we exclude the ones you were unfamiliar with, you got 81% correct.
~S
no subject
Date: 2008-08-13 07:40 (UTC)From:82% for the other test tho