= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Emily comments on How is your mind different from everyone else's? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (266)
One of my hunches is that people differ much more than commonly thought on the accuracy and strength of face recognition, even outside of clinical prosopagnosia.
I'm very poor at this, tending both to not recognize people, but also to over-recognize; some days every stranger I cross makes me think of someone I know strongly enough that I almost break into a smile and start greeting them, and because of past embarrassing occasions I've developed compensations which now manifest as shyness.
I'm very bad at recognizing celebrities; I've often been out walking with my wife or with friends, and hear "Oh look, here goes X" where X is someone I saw too much of on TV. And I've totally missed them going by, and a second glance leaves me unconvinced it's actually X.
This is what I was going to post about. I am terrible at recognising faces. People I know well are fine, but even a quite good acquaintance in the wrong context can easily throw me completely. There are a very small handful of celebrities I can recognise by their faces. I recognise most people below the level of fairly-good-acquaintance by their voice, not their face. There have been many occasions on which I haven't realised I know someone, or have seen an actor in something else, till they speak.
It's also not quite that I remember the features but can't synthesise them into a face, which I think some people with this difficulty find -- I have real trouble remembering features, too. Half the time, if you ask me whether friend-so-and-so has dark or light hair, or is tall or short, I'll struggle to say for sure.
I think I'm relatively bad at reading facial expressions, too.
I have the same thing, with the added complication that I can't recognize voices either. I can remember people's hair color and approximate height, though.