My disability. Yes it is real.

Disabilities    deficiencies     challenges    weaknesses     "We all have them      We all got 'em"  to quote a Jimmy Buffett song line (he was speaking about "relationships"), and we all do our best to overcome them.    I do not recognize/remember faces very well.  It is embarrassing and very frustrating.  My mother had the same difficulty and so do my brother and sister.  Our father, until an accident when he was 60 caused brain damage, had excellent facial recognition.  You might think an engineer, who often thinks visually, would have no trouble thinking visually and remembering faces.   

I often thought it was just that I did not try hard enough, but remembering faces has always eluded me no matter how hard I try. 

Recently I came across a story about "face blindness" and started digging further.  The "official" name is prosopagnosia.  There has been a lot of research done in the past decade or two. It is real and from 2 to 2.5% of our population has it.   There are varying degrees and for some it is hereditary, while for others is acquired, such as through injury.   Many times there are other difficulties, symptoms, or other cognitive problems.  The cause is unknown, but there is a specific area in the brain which is used for facial recognition and which causes prosopagnosia. Compensation for most of us takes several forms, including recognizing non-facial features, even including teeth, scars, glasses, gait, hair, body shape, voice, etc, etc.

At trade shows, I read name tags, rather than look at faces. Some of those around me would help by mentioning a name or some other piece of information. There have been others who would just let me flounder, sometimes even seeming to relish my difficulty.


Click for Lesly Stahl CBS News, August 2012


Read this Wired magazine article from 2006

Link here to "faceblind.org"

 
I took the "test" at faceblind.org and correctly identified only 6 of the 16 faces I tried to identify.  There were others of the total of 30 faces presented that I knew the name of the person, but had no idea of the face, so I passed on them.  All faces were presented without hair or ears --- just the face.   I "got" Elvis, but missed George W. Bush and Bill Clinton!  At the end of the test, it said that scoring less than 50% would be an indication of faceblindness.


My wife came home the other day and told me how terribly embarrassed she had been because she did not recognize our neighbor in a different setting than usual.  My wife is normally very good with faces and this had upset her quite a bit.  For me it sounded like an everyday occurrence.....because it is, so I had little comment.  I have thought about it more and it is a "welcome to my world" where such things can and do happen every day of my life.   

There are degrees of severity of prosopagnosia, some do recognize faces of people whom they have seen a number of times.  

All of us who are face blind have lots of coping mechanisms. We learn to live with it....starting at an early age.  So do those who are color blind or have a physical disability or have any other impairment from birth.  And remember "We all have them,  we all got 'em".  We just might not recognize our disability or have a name for it for a long time.


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