Face BlindnessWrong Planet Face Blindness Social Blindness Emotion Disconnect Autism |
This is a much more subtle context than just imagining that this person is somehow blind to faces. It's a cognitive limitation
like colour blindness, but still more subtle.
When someone is colour blind, others will accept this and just realize in the most common form, that it's not possible for them to see red or green. It's probably more like they can see these colours but due to the lack of one kind of visual receptors, their differentaition of red and green is impossible; their perception of these colours make them indistinguishable. Now face blindness (Prosopagnosia) is more subtle in that though the person can see the face and all its parts and their movements, it is not possible for this person to assign any meaning. Any interpretation comes from an intellectual process of comparing the combination of facial parts and their positions to previously learnt combinations. Of course faces move quickly and subtly in time and it's mostly not possible to calculate the meaning behind the combination of facial positions with any accuracy or in time to be useful. Someone who is face blind is as able to differentiate faces as they are hands, for example. How many of us can extract the exquisite details of communication by only seeing someone's hands? This is another link to test how well you can read faces. Some people cannot read these and regularly score under 50%, even if they have tried these faces a few times. Reading Faces Test |