Interpersonal Relations

Recognizing Faces

"What Does She Look Like?"

Fifteen years ago, sitting at dinner with my family, I asked a question that had slowly dawned on me, "When we're talking about someone, do you see that person in your mind?"

What I've found since then is that most people who do, have never imagined that anyone else doesn't. And for those who don't, it sometimes takes many years of life to realize that others do. I've also found that it's a matter of degree. Some people visualize faces in their minds clearly and at will. Some people visualize faces in their minds only occasionally and not clearly...still others, not at all. For those of us who do not visualize faces well, recall can be a problem. Someone asks, "What does she look like?" and we are often hard-pressed to give an answer. Often our answer has more to do with personality or mood than with looks.

"How widespread is this problem and what can I learn about it?" I wondered recently. I decided to do a survey. Writing to about 170 people, I thought I could get some answers. Although only about twenty wrote back, I was right about getting answers! Not only did I get some answers about how others remember faces, but I was also led to websites spilling over with information. However, I have found that those answers have also brought more questions than I had before. Nevertheless, the answers are interesting and may help encourage a better understanding of one of our many differences as people.

How well someone recognizes faces and what it means seems to vary greatly. Most everyone has forgotten someone they've met at one time or another, just as everyone forgets a name, and many people occasionally forget where they have parked the car. Life is full of distractions. But some people find it hard to recognize someone in a new setting, even though they have seen that person many times, for example, seeing the librarian at the grocery store, or the postman at the doctors office, or the neighbor at the mall. If you are nodding, or if terror filled your heart as you read that sentence, join the club. It turns out that you are in good company.

Is there a name for this condition? Yes, there is a name. Whether or not the name applies to any given individual is one of the many unanswered questions that I have discovered. Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, refers, at its worst, to those who cannot recognize faces, even of their family and closest friends. Just what, after that, constitutes face-blindness is one of the many questions. Perhaps it is a bit like the difference between being totally blind and being legally blind, or just being visually impaired and short of a federal legal definition. There is a wide range, and where one is, in that range, may make a difference in one's life, but the point remains that some adjustments and understanding are in order.

Have you ever watched a television show with someone who is constantly asking, "Who was it who did that?" or "Was he one of the good guys or one of the bad guys?" For someone who does not recall or recognize faces well, following the plot of a show can be difficult, as is pointed out in the website of the Prosopagnosia Research Center at Harvard University.

"How does someone become this way?" you may wonder. Many of the prosopagnosics who have been studied have developed a problem as a result of brain damage. However, those who have always had difficulty with faces, and slowly awakened to it being anything different from the norm, have what the researchers call Developmental Prosopagnosia. The Harvard researchers think this may result in a different impairment than someone who has brain damage, and they also think it is often genetic.

One example of brain damage affecting the ability to recognize faces was that of a man in the UK who, after an accident, could recognize anything else, but could not recognize faces, not even his own. This led researchers to believe that there is a specific aspect of the brain devoted solely to the complex task of faces.

If you are one of the lucky ones at the other end of the spectrum, who can recall faces from years ago, and can recognize someone you've met only once, I hope this information will help you to understand those of us who view the world a little differently. If you are somewhere in between, maybe not always visualizing faces in your mind or not recognizing people every time, but not to the degree of having prosopagnosia -- or maybe remembering names is your difficulty -- there are sometimes hints to help, such as those in an article written to help people in corporate circles to remember the people they meet.

For the rest of us, it's nice to know we're not alone, don't you think? And if you're interested in more information, the Harvard Research Links page "has it all".

If you haven't read the results of my little survey about visualization of faces, you can CLICK HERE to go that page.

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