Are you a super-recogniser?

[gradus]

I didn't know i was 'prosopagnosic' (thanks kea) until now. Is treatment available on the NHS?

[Beef Oven!]

I went through a phase of it, before I was married, of course.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Isn't "prosopagnosic" Greek for "being a bloke"?

[ahinton]

I've not taken the test but, as I'd probably fail to recognise myself if called upon to do so, I thought that I might be wise not to bother to try...

[vinteuil]

... innarestin' that all the mugshots were of men.

I wonder if there wd be a difference if some had been of women.

Whether straight men / gay women 'lock on to' and wd be able to identify men / women differently; mutatis mutandis gay men / straight women.

I wonder if there is a wider range of facial types among men or women.

I got a pretty average 9...

[Petrushka]

8 for me. The profile ones were where I fell down. I found the head-on ones fairly easy and that was reflected in my score.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I got 3 (three).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I got 3 (three).

This surprised me, because I can normally distinguish identical twins.

[kea]

I didn't know i was 'prosopagnosic' (thanks kea) until now. Is treatment available on the NHS?

I'm not aware of any treatment that exists—it's supposed to be neurological, or something. I believe there are some research centers in London though, & possibly Cambridge, if you want to be a research subject >.>

Isn't "prosopagnosic" Greek for "being a bloke"?

It's about evenly divided by sex as far as I know. There are several variations on the condition: some people can't make sense of faces at all, others can identify faces but not any meaningful differences between them (I'd describe my own experience as being that faces just don't add up into anything recogniseable—I can tell when something is a face, provided it looks sufficiently human, but not tell it apart from other faces; I can identify individual facial features (nose, mouth, eyes, etc) but not a face 'as a whole', and the features won't stay in my memory. So I don't recognise myself in mirrors, parents, friends, or co-workers out of context—unless they are wearing recogniseable clothing or a familiar hairstyle, or unless they speak to me—and I can't identify faces in pictures or rock formations or the moon or whatever. Tbh I find it more of an annoyance than a real 'medical condition' but whatever.)

[Pabmusic]

For anyone who missed the PM programme, they're looking for super-recognisers - people who never forget a face, can pick people out of a crowd on CCTV, etc. A bit of harmless fun courtesy of the University of Greenwich - I scored 9 out of 14, 10 being the threshold, so alas am not.

I tried it. Hopeless.

I've spent 30 years seeing a conveyor belt of thousands of different people. I can remember names quite well, but can't always match them to faces. But names stick; so do faces. But together...?

"Hello. Remember me? We got married last Saturday."*

*[ Aside: The first Mrs Pab always wore glasses, except on our wedding day - she was sweetly vain - and afterwards said to me, "I wasn't really sure it was you I was marrying"]

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Despite only scoring three, I know my facial recognition is good. When I was teaching in a 1,900 pupil secondary school, I wasn't too good at remembering names, but when provided with photo ID, I could describe everyone I taught in detail.

How do we recognise people in a distant crowd? Apparently it's all to do with the exact positioning of facial features, more than the features themselves.

[Pabmusic]

...Apparently it's all to do with the exact positioning of facial features, more than the features themselves.

Yes. Humans are a social species and have evolved to recognise patterns, particularly "two eyes, a nose and a mouth" - very understandable evolutionary pressures for this (but which will take us way off topic). It's why people see Jesus in a raincloud, or Elvis in a piece of toast.

[Richard Tarleton]

Apparently sheep are good at recognising and remembering other sheep, and they can also recognise a certain number of humans.

[Lat-Literal]

For anyone who missed the PM programme, they're looking for super-recognisers - people who never forget a face, can pick people out of a crowd on CCTV, etc. A bit of harmless fun courtesy of the University of Greenwich - I scored 9 out of 14, 10 being the threshold, so alas am not.

11 - the three I didn't get were all towards the end as I get the expression/aura more than the angles/specific features.

I'm very audio-visual. Totally useless at practical tasks - I would say manually dyslexic.

[alycidon]

I only got 6 which surprised me as I am quite interested in physiognomy. I'll bet if they had been women's faces I would have done better.