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Are you face blind? (w/ quiz)

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by candyjiru, Oct 2, 2015.

  1. Kaiser

    Kaiser Guest

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    Short answer, not really.

    Blah, blah, blah... survey fun... blah, blah, blah
    1. You have failed to recognize a close friend or family member, especially when you weren’t expecting to see them.

    If I want to remember, I will. I don't like being caught off guard, especially in person, and if that means remembering every little detail, so be it.


    2. When you meet someone new, you try to remember their hairstyle or a distinctive feature rather than their face.

    I go above and beyond just that.

    To give you an example of how I perceive somebody new:

    Scan head to toe, and find information. T-shirt has band on it; conversation pieces, the shirt and the band. The way they position themselves demonstrates comfort/confidence/insecurity/anxiety/etc; respond in appropriate tone and beneficial gestures. The side of their body they use more, including hand; tells me what side, if it came to it, to swing and hit them, with a better chance of connecting.

    I'm practically a Terminator. I take in everything. There is a reason I read people well, and this is just part of it.


    3. You have trouble following films or television shows that have more than a few distinctive characters.

    In the beginning, maybe. But if the script is good, they'll stand out. Otherwise you call them extras, and if this isn't intentional, that's just bad writing.


    4. You have failed to recognize yourself in the mirror and/or have difficulty identifying yourself in photographs.

    Momentarily, but that's the dysphoria, when it does strike. Otherwise, I know what I look like. Sometimes I do go blind, because of this angelic radiant glow of sexy.


    5. When someone casually waves or says hello in the street, you more often than not don’t know who they are.

    Some people are that friendly, it's whatever. But if I notice you, and know you, and you wave to me, my focus is zoned. I'm not casually approached for idle chit chat by folks, especially in public, it's usually for something.


    6. When someone gets a haircut, you may not recognize them when you see them again.

    This has happened once, but it was more than a hair cut. They cut off their long hair, shaved their facial hair, and got contacts. It was... impressive how radically different they looked.


    7. You have difficulty recognizing neighbors, friends, coworkers, clients, schoolmates (etc.) out of context.

    Unless you're brand new and just started that second, no, I'll know you. If I frequent a place, you can bet I have a mental database of information on you. I know what you like and dislike, what gets you to open up and shuts you down, what methods inspire you and what discourage you.

    Neighbors and clients, same thing.

    Schoolmates, same thing, but it goes further. I watch how folks respond to certain words, to get an idea of how they're doing. I observe how folks are when taking tests; from the way they move their pencils/pens to the playing with the hair, it tells me a lot that I like to know. To give you an example of how this has worked out for me, a young lady was showing little minor signs of stress during a test, so after class I jokingly asked if she had passed. The look on her face, though brief, told me I was correct in assuming she was nervous. When she confirmed this, I was able to have pre-class study sessions with her.

    I, basically, see how my classmates are, so that I can focus my energies appropriately into getting what I want or need, by finding the most passionate about learning, the most informed on the subject, and the most preferred by the instructor.

    That way, I don't have my own credentials to fall back on. I can check mate a professor, if need be. So no, faces are easy to remember, especially the more frequently I see them and the more relevant they are to my life.

    Old habits are hard to break.
     
    #21 Kaiser, Oct 3, 2015
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2015
  2. Xeno

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    I'm horrible with faces, if you asked me to remember one of my friend's faces, it just ends up being all fuzzy.
     
  3. WallWeed

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    Your accuracy in the experiment was: 81%

    The average score on this test is around 80% correct responses for adult participants.
    A score of 60% or below may indicate face blindness.


    Hmm. Interesting. I don't often forget a face, but some of those examples were just impossible to differentiate. o_o
     
  4. Batman

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    I got 88% on the test! Too bad I'm shit with remembering names :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

    1. You have failed to recognize a close friend or family member, especially when you weren’t expecting to see them.
    Only once. To be fair though, I hadn't seen her in three years, and she'd bleached her hair and grown a few inches.

    2. When you meet someone new, you try to remember their hairstyle or a distinctive feature rather than their face.

    Not really. I don't often like inspecting people's appearances, but when I do, I mostly notice eyebrows, jawline, eyeshape..

    3. You have trouble following films or television shows that have more than a few distinctive characters.

    Sometimes. I find voices the easiest way to differentiate characters in shows with large casts.

    4. You have failed to recognize yourself in the mirror and/or have difficulty identifying yourself in photographs.

    Nope. I know that mug anywhere.

    5. When someone casually waves or says hello in the street, you more often than not don’t know who they are.

    Well, in a way. I live in a small town, and its just kind of customary to greet/wave at passersby if it's a nice day out.

    6. When someone gets a haircut, you may not recognize them when you see them again.

    It's just hair?

    7. You have difficulty recognizing neighbors, friends, coworkers, clients, schoolmates (etc.) out of context.
    No. Although this might also be aided by the small-town dealio.
     
  5. Ruby Dragon

    Ruby Dragon Well-Known Member

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    I scored 76%
     
  6. Harjus

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    I am face blind. My father is too. I can't recognice family members if I don't expect seeing them and I still can't be sure. This is a real bother. Very often I just tell people about this since it is much less confusing to everyone that way.

    I don't remember names either. To me people just kind of disappear. Nameless and faceless people. They are everywhere... :eek:
     
  7. RainbowGreen

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    I got 71%, but I'm not that good at faces to be honest.

    I often mix up people who look similar (mostly girls, I don't seem to have a problem with boys). I also use other ways to recognize someone, often focusing on one of their features (hair color, height, body shape, hair lenght etc.). I will recognize my close family members, though. But, at the same time, I recognize most people by voice.

    I don't have the best eyesight, so I have to find something else to identify people. I won't wear glasses just to see your face.
     
  8. TigerInATophat

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    Surprisingly, despite having visual problems tracking and focusing, memory lapses and more recently increasing short-sightedness, I somehow managed to score 97% on that test. I think perhaps it's a bit different when looking at faces not on a screen, because I can't simultaneously pay attention to someones face and scan details of the environment around me, at least not quickly.

    1. You have failed to recognize a close friend or family member, especially when you weren’t expecting to see them.

    Not with family members so much, because I'll remember other things about them before I spot their face. But then I don't have that many family members that I've known very well. If I had a large family network who knows. I have failed to recognize a friend when seeing them in the street/in a crowd, but only until I manage to zero-in on their face, at which point it clicks. Again I think this has more to do with poor tracking/focusing than anything else.


    2. When you meet someone new, you try to remember their hairstyle or a distinctive feature rather than their face.

    I try to remember what I can, but distinctive features or hairstyle probably take priority because I know I will see these before I see a specific condensed area of detail about them such as their face.


    3. You have trouble following films or television shows that have more than a few distinctive characters.

    This is funny because I've just finished watching series 3 of Orphan Black lol (several clone characters all played by the same actress for those who don't know it). In general I don't have difficulty unless there happens to be two different characters that look similar - like same hair colour/style or whatever - and I'm not really paying much attention.


    4. You have failed to recognize yourself in the mirror and/or have difficulty identifying yourself in photographs.

    Never had trouble in the mirror. I do know myself in photos but am always struck by the lack of resemblance. However this is academic in my case because other people have even more trouble recognizing me in photos than I do. I'm not exaggerating when I say virtually every person who has known me well enough to see me both in the flesh and in images has commented on this. To give an example, a few years ago one friend saw a very recent photo of me and asked: "Who's that woman?" So it's definitely not just my eyes/brain.


    5. When someone casually waves or says hello in the street, you more often than not don’t know who they are.

    Yes. But it depends on a few things like distance or how fast they or I are moving. When I do eventually 'see' their face and it's someone I don't know very well it's usually more of a "I know your face but I can't quite place it" thing.


    6. When someone gets a haircut, you may not recognize them when you see them again.

    Not right away maybe, but again once I zero-in on their face I'll recognize them assuming I know them well enough.


    7. You have difficulty recognizing neighbors, friends, coworkers, clients, schoolmates (etc.) out of context.

    Similar to 1 and 5.

    In a nutshell: it takes me longer than most to actually see the face I'm looking at and thus recognize it, rather than taking longer to recognize something I can easily see. The latter seems to be a more accurate description of face-blindness, so my problem is most likely not that.
     
  9. horrorgeek

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    Hmm. This is all really interesting. I'm not totally sure this is true, but I read somewhere that all the faces of people you see in dreams are ones of people you've actually seen before, if only for a second. It's something about how the brain can't like abstractly make up faces. If this does hold some truth, it'd be interesting to see how this applies to those who are face blind, insofar as to recognizing the people in your dreams.
     
  10. Lawrence

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    I don't know if I have prosopagnosia. I don't want to jump to conclusions. I didn't hear about this condition until July 2015 and again now. But I do have a lot of trouble remembering faces!

    I usually either intuitively recognise dream characters (their appearance might be more symbolic than how they really look) or they're fuzzy strangers. I can see their expressions, but I almost never feel like I've seen those people before. My brain still picks up plenty random information. My brain plays some sort of internal radio (bits of songs, conversations from 10 years ago, annoying TV adverts, and documentaries) during most of my dreams.
     
  11. candyjiru

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    In my dreams there are sometimes new people and sometimes people I know, people from my past, my family, etc, but they often don't look like they do irl and just have the general aura of the person they relate to... If they do look like they really are, they have kind of a fuzzy face like they do in my memories... Kind of like they're being blurred out or like your eyesight is really poor so you can tell they have eyes and such but it's too fuzzy to make out exactly, even though the rest of them is fine... But, this never seems odd to me, because that's how I see most people in my mind, as kind of an aura, or a cartoon version of themselves... XD;;;;
     
  12. Browncoat

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    I got 57% on the test. Was pretty much guessing once they got to the memorize 6 faces bit.


    I definitely have trouble remembering faces. Even made a thread on it here awhile back. There's maybe one person in the world whose face I'd have trouble forgetting, my sister's, and even then I bet if I didn't see her in a couple years I bet I could forget it. Otherwise, if I see someone out of context I have a very hard time recognizing them.

    That being said I certainly don't have prosopagnosia. Those people describe people's faces as blank plates. I can still recognize features - just have an extremely hard time remembering them or distinguishing them from other people's.
     
  13. Meadowlark17

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    Yeah I scored a 44%
     
  14. KaySee

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    60% or below indicates face blindness. I got 49%.

    And answered yes for questions 1-7.

    That... explains a lot. Always wondered how I was expected to memorize names with people, but apparently the face is a major factor in that. I prefer body, skin color, hair, and clothes. I look for my hair and eye color and clothes that look familiar for to find myself in pictures. And by eliminating all others. I never really thought much of that, but apparently it is not normal. Huh.
     
    #34 KaySee, Oct 14, 2015
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2015