StemCell Therapy

A test has been developed that can identify people with the same inability to recognise faces that is thought to affect Brad Pitt.

Face blindness, or prosopagnosia, is thought to affect around one in 50 individuals including the Hollywood star who has talked about how it causes him to appear egotistical.

Sufferers have to rely on other clues to identity such as hair style, clothes, or speech. Sometimes people are so badly affected that they avoid social situations for fear of embarrassment or causing offence.

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.

Dr Punit Shah, lead author

Pitt told Esquire magazine in 2013 he had such a hard time recognising people he has met that he thought he must have prosopagnosia. At the time he said the situation was worsening so he was thinking of being tested for it. Former Dragons Den star Duncan Bannatyne, Stephen Fry and the Labour politician Patricia Hewitt also reportedly suffer the same affliction.

Researchers at Anglia Ruskin University have now come up with a simple questionnaire that can provide an accurate way of assessing face recognition. In tests, volunteers were asked the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with 20 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.

Comparing the scores with results from in depth computerised face recognition tasks demonstrated that the test could quickly and effectively diagnose the condition.

Psychologist Dr Punit Shah 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.

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.

Therapeutic training programmes known to work in adults could be even more successful in children because of their plastic brains, he said.

Dr Shah added: 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.

The findings are published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Read the original post:
Test could confirm if Brad Pitt does suffer from face blindness - The i ... - iNews

This entry was posted on May 18, 2017 at 3:42 am 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. |