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The inability to recognise faces is a surprisingly common, but fairly unknown, condition.

Those who suffer have to use clothes, hairstyles, voice or walking manner to identify a person.

It means that they often remove themselves from social situations so that they dont embarrass or offend others.

Many people are unaware they are affected, and may just think they have a bad memory.

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Some people with face blindness struggle to recognise their family and friends, and this can have a negative impact on their lives."

Punit Shah

However a new simple test to diagnose face blindness has been presented in research published in the The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

They looked at whether an online questionnaire could accurately reveal face recognition ability.

Punit Shah, lead study author and lecturer in psychology at Anglia Ruskin University, said: Some people with face blindness struggle to recognise their family and friends, and this can have a negative impact on their lives.

Face blindness has been recognised by the NHS since 2016 and it is important to establish how many people are affected in order that they receive the assistance they need.

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In the questionnaire, the participants were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with particular statements, such as I often mistake people I have met before for strangers or I sometimes find movies hard to follow because of difficulties recognising characters.

Shah explained: Psychologists interested in face blindness have been hesitant to use questionnaires, but our new study suggests that using a well-designed questionnaire is helpful in recognising the condition and is suitable to be used on a large scale.

We are now adapting this questionnaire as there is evidence that prosopagnosia exists in children. It could help to explain why some children struggle to make close friends, and the problem could be more acute in schools where uniforms are worn.

Early detection may be beneficial as training programmes to improve face recognition, which are known to work in adults, may be even more successful in children given that they have a more plastic brain. There is still a lot to learn about prosopagnosia, but this research into identifying the condition using questionnaires is hopefully a step in the right direction.

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One of the most well known sufferers of prosopagnosia is the actor Brad Pitt.

He has spoken in the past about how the condition makes him seem egotistical.

According to the NHS, the condition often affects people from birth.

They are unable to recognise family, friends and partners, and have to use other clues to identify them.

This can be difficult if a sufferer sees someone out of context, and can cause distress.

Read more:
Face blindness test: Do you have the same condition as Brad Pitt? - Express.co.uk

This entry was posted on May 19, 2017 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Blindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |