Face Blindness/ (prosopagnosia) Test

[Yeshuasdaughter]

I have noticed that I struggle with recognizing friends or neighbors, when not in the surroundings that I normally find the person. For instance, a person from a church I attended for several years, seeing her at the grocery store, although she had approached me, smiling and talking, I did not recognize her.

This has occasionally led to strained relationships, as it isn't seen as polite to not recognize someone who thought they were your friend. These are people I often think about with fondness, but if I don't recognize them right away, they may feel that I really don't care about them at all.

Researchers at The University of New South Wales created a test for identifying face blindness. It is very thorough. It has different sections, where it tests one's ability to spot a face that one has seen before, in new surroundings.

I got 26% on the test. I'm surprised it was that high.

It's a great test. A little long, but worth it. They don't ask for any personal information, other than your age and sex, for statistics.

https://facetest.psy.unsw.edu.au/

 

[tree]

https://www.autismforums.com/threads/prosopagnosia-face-blindness.36796/There are links to five additional threads on this topic in Post #3.

 

[Aspychata]

I suffered this at the club l bartender/server. If they had the same height, same color hair, l couldn't tell men apart. I didn't recognize the bank teller saying hi, she was working at Walmart for a new job.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

68% overall.
I thought I did significantly worse.

 

[MildredHubble]

I have the same problem, if I see someone outside of the context I usually see them, my brain just will not recognise them most of the time. It can cause me real anxiety too, when I go to town I'm often worried that I'm walking round snubbing people unintentionally.

It gets worse, if I haven't seen you for 6 months, unless I've known you for several decades, I'm almost certain to not recognise you. This has certainly lead to some awkward situations.

I might take the test as I'm curious as to how I would measure up

 

[MildredHubble]

Ah darn it, I have to wait until I can use my computer to do the test. It's a bit late here right now. Perhaps tomorrow

 

[Ella Spell]

I did really badly on the face memory part.
I did better on the second part but I was literally guessing.

I'm horrible with faces. I don't know my brother's two stepsons if I saw them in a room of four people and I've known them about ten years. I don't even remember which is which when they're together and they're not twins. I couldn't even recognise my partner for our first few dates and he'd have to wait in his car so I could check the plates, or else he'd tell me ahead of time what he was going to wear.

 

[Richelle-H]

I thought I was worse with the test than I thought. Thing is a great many of the photos in the left right test were so blurry that making a choice was darn near impossible for me and yet:

Your overall score on the UNSW Face Test was 61%.

 

[Magna]

Very interesting. I scored much higher than I thought: 65% which is in the top 25%.

I recognized one thing while I was doing the test: In large part I find looking at people's faces for more than the blink of an eye to be unpleasant and uncomfortable and there are but a few exceptions.

I also found that distinctive facial features of some of the people made me think spontaneous thoughts that would be easier to recognize. One person in the test for example my first thought was: "Blue eyes, pig nose". Those features were easy to spot in subsequent pictures.

 

[Progster]

Yes, I have a problem with this. I associate people with a building, an item or clothing, their car, and often when I see them out of their normal context, I don't recognise them at all. It causes me a few problems in life.

 

[Ella Spell]

I don't even recognise people IN context.

 

[Progster]

I don't even recognise people IN context.

I have coping mechanisms. I learn, for example, that the name of the guy who has the baker's is called John. So if I go to buy bread and there's a man in there with the same kind of haircut and hair colour, same height and build, I know it's most likely John.

However, if John's brother Tony is in there today and not John, I probably won't realise it's Tony and not John. (this happened recently).

 

[Outdated]

In all honesty I expected to score worse, I'm pretty bad with faces. And names.

On the UNSW Face Memory Test you scored 18 out of 40.
On the UNSW Face Sorting Test you scored 46 out of 80.
Your overall score on the UNSW Face Test was 53%.

Most of my responses were guesses. Funny thing though, I used to do free computer work for people in a remote area. All of these people obviously knew me well but I'd have no idea who they were, yet if I'd looked at their computer before I'd remember all their logins and passwords and remember that computer's history. I'd cross my fingers and hope the username was in fact the person's name because remembering the computer did not recall memory of the person.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I got 53% overall. I don't remember the breakdown. I hoped I could get it from the email, but they haven't sent it yet.

 

[Alexej]

On the UNSW Face Memory Test you scored 23 out of 40.
On the UNSW Face Sorting Test you scored 14 out of 80.
Your overall score on the UNSW Face Test was 31%.

an interesting test

 

[lovely_darlingprettybaby]

I have noticed that I struggle with recognizing friends or neighbors, when not in the surroundings that I normally find the person. For instance, a person from a church I attended for several years, seeing her at the grocery store, although she had approached me, smiling and talking, I did not recognize her.

This has occasionally led to strained relationships, as it isn't seen as polite to not recognize someone who thought they were your friend. These are people I often think about with fondness, but if I don't recognize them right away, they may feel that I really don't care about them at all.

Researchers at The University of New South Wales created a test for identifying face blindness. It is very thorough. It has different sections, where it tests one's ability to spot a face that one has seen before, in new surroundings.

I got 26% on the test. I'm surprised it was that high.

It's a great test. A little long, but worth it. They don't ask for any personal information, other than your age and sex, for statistics.

https://facetest.psy.unsw.edu.au/

I cannot fully recognize a persons face until I see them in person because I cannot see the details in their face until I see them that way.
I think faces are beautiful particularly eyes.
I get sensory issues sometimes but faces to me are beautiful and once I get used to a person it is much easier to see beauty in their face.
And when a women takes care of herself too and radiates positivity and self love and self esteem it is easier too.
I struggle with bodies though I sometimes see imperfections with them
I can look at a face in a photo and not know what a person looks like.
Sometimes I see people in real life and think they are beautiful and it may just be the energy they project or something because sometimes I look at someone's face a lot.
And I think my family are beautiful even though they ate not classically beautiful because they just warm me I think my sister and my mum and katie are beautiful. I see their positive points like my mum has nice thick hair and nice color eyes, I love my mums eyes, how she dresses nice and how she looks before she goes out and her warm hugs and I love my sister's hair as well and her face and I love katies hair too and her beautiful face and the way she dresses.

 

[Aneka]

What gives me anxiety in public is not recognizing familiar faces and being judged for it. Anyone having those issues?

 

[Aspychata]

Had this happen with a teller from a bank. I recognized her voice, but l couldn't place the context that l knew her from. It's hard when people come up from jobs, start talking to you like you remember them from 2000 customers you waited on. Like yeah, may that's not happening.

 

[Kavigant]

I'm not sure whether this is the same thing, but I don't recognize my neighbors despite living in the same house for over twenty years.

If I see someone frequently (like at work), I will be able to recognize them fairly easily, but if I see them only infrequently, I don't recognize them, even in context. Meanwhile, my wife recognizes everyone - even if she sees them in an unfamiliar place.

These days, I either wave hello to every car that passes me on my block, or I pretend to be looking away so that I won't embarrass myself by waving to strangers.

 

[Outdated]

I have incredibly poor facial recognition/memory. Unless you have in some way made a lasting impression on me, if I haven't seen you for a couple of weeks I'll have no idea who you are next time we meet.

I run in to people that know me often enough, I just run with it, my saving grace being that as an Aussie I can call anyone Mate. Most people are a little insulted, sometimes they'll even point it out to me - "You don't remember me, do you?". I apologise and admit that I don't.

I don't let it bother me though, it's not like I can change it at all. I learnt a whole heap of memory tricks for remembering people's names when I was young, but they're not much help if you don't recognise faces.