Perception and Prosopagnosia

This is an hour long presentation by Lynn Robertson, from UC Berkely, on prosopagnosia presented by the Google TechTalks Series.

MSNBC Story on Super-Recognizers

Some people never forget a face - Behavior

MSNBC.com

Some people never forget a face

'Super-recognizers' have uncanny ability to remember everyone they meet

By Elizabeth Fernandez

msnbc.com contributor

updated 8:27 a.m. ET, Thurs., May 28, 2009

We've all had that sinking feeling: a person seems familiar, someone we might have once met, but somehow we just can't place the face.

Not Jennifer Jarett. She never forgets a face. Not even someone she met for just a moment, not even decades later.

Jarett is a "super-recognizer,'' a freshly minted term for an elite group of people who are exceptional at remembering faces.

"It's sort of a weird thing to be able to do,'' says Jarett, 38, a Manhattan resident who works as a city employee. "My friends refer to me as their memory. People's faces don't really change to me, even people from my childhood. It's as if they are cemented in my brain.''

Psychologists at Harvard University have discovered that Jarett shares her special knack with others, establishing for the first time that some people have superior skills at face recognition.  

From face blind to super-vision
New research shows that there's a broad range of face-recognition ability, a spectrum ranging from the "face blind'' to those on the opposite end with superior powers of perception.

"Super-recognizers actually see faces differently,'' says Dr. Richard Russell, a researcher in the Harvard Vision Sciences Laboratory and lead author of the new study published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. "They can recognize people out of context, people who aren't important to them, people who they may have met only briefly.''

Russell and his colleagues were investigating developmental prosopagnosia, a condition in which people have normal vision but are unable to recognize faces, even those of close relatives — an estimated 2 percent of the general population has exceptionally poor face-recognition ability.

Amid the research, the scientists were contacted by Jarett and several others claiming to have stellar recognition abilities.

Intrigued, the scientists concocted a battery of difficult tests. One, called Before They Were Famous, required the subjects to identify famous individuals as children. All four test subjects passed the experiments with high marks. 

"My boyfriend called me a freak of nature,'' says Christine Erickson, 42, a stay-at-home mother of two in Boston, one of the super-recognizers.  Erickson once had a chance encounter with a woman who years earlier had been her waitress.

"She had transformed from being an edgy-looking urban hipster to having long hair and looking completely different,'' says Erickson. "I flipped through my mental files and recognized her.''

Super-recognizer or, um, stalker?
To their chagrin, super-recognizers have learned that their special gifts are not always appreciated.

"People sometimes give me strange looks, like I was stalking them,'' says Jarett.

Riding the subway about a year ago, she recognized a man who once worked for her hairdresser.

"I said 'You were Barry's assistant.' He looked at me funny — it had been five years. So I said 'Oh, the reason I remember you is because you did such a good job blowing out my hair.' He seemed really flattered.''

Jarett hasn't found any particular use for her skill, but the study says benefits might surface. For instance, airport security employees could be screened for their ability to recognize faces, and eyewitnesses to crimes could similarly be assessed.

Tips for ordinary folks
For people with average ability, Dr. Jim Tanaka, a professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, who is not connected with the new study, offers a few tips to enhance recognition.

"Pay close attention to the dynamics of the face — the movement, the expressions, the different angles,'' says Tanaka, who studies cognitive and neurological processes underlying face recognition.

Also, he says, put less emphasis on superficial cues that can change over time, such as hairstyles and eyeglasses.

"Try to remember the structural aspects of the face instead of incidental surface features,'' he says. "Don't focus too much on details, but rather form an overall, holistic impression of a person's face.''

As for Jarett, she's thrilled with her new scientific designation.

"My friends and I joke that I should get a cape with a big S on it,'' she says. "When I was little, I always wanted to have super powers. Now I'm finally getting to fulfill my childhood dream.''

Elizabeth Fernandez is a writer based in San Francisco.

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New Topographical Agnosia Group

Since many of us with Prosopagnosia also have topographagnosia, ot Topographica Agnosia, or Topographical Agnosia, or Navigational Agnosia, or Topographical Disorientation (let's jsut call it TA, alright?), I decided to start a Yahoo Group where we could discuss are trials and tribulations of living with TA. Feel free to join the group and join the discussion.

It would be nice to create a number of real-life stories there, so people who are looking to diagnose themselves could go there, read, and become more familiar with the condition.

If you would like to subscribe, send an email here:
PlaceBlind-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Please indicate why you are interested in subscribing.
You can find the group under the name Topographical Agnosia.

'Super-recognizers - Opposite of Prosopagnosics?

'Super-recognizers,' with extraordinary face recognition ability, never forget a face

this link from EurekaAlert!

Contact: Amy Lavoie
amy_lavoie@harvard.edu
617-496-9982
Harvard University

'Super-recognizers,' with extraordinary face recognition ability, never forget a face

Research suggests that face recognition may vary more than previously understood

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 19, 2009 – Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who've discovered a group they call "super-recognizers": those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later.

The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans. Previous research has identified as much as 2 percent of the population as having "face-blindness," or prosopagnosia, a condition characterized by great difficulty in recognizing faces. For the first time, this new research shows that others excel in face recognition, indicating that the trait could be on a spectrum, with prosopagnosics on the low end and super-recognizers at the high end.

The research is published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and was led by Richard Russell, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, with co-authors Ken Nakayama, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and Brad Duchaine of the University College London.

The research involved administering standardized face recognition tests. The super-recognizers scored far above average on these tests—higher than any of the normal control subjects.

"There has been a default assumption that there is either normal face recognition, or there is disordered face recognition," says Russell. "This suggests that's not the case, that there is actually a very wide range of ability. It suggests a different model—a different way of thinking about face recognition ability, and possibly even other aspects of perception, in terms of a spectrum of abilities, rather than there being normal and disordered ability."

Super-recognizers report that they recognize other people far more often than they are recognized. For this reason, says Russell, they often compensate by pretending not to recognize someone they met in passing, so as to avoid appearing to attribute undue importance to a fleeting encounter.

"Super-recognizers have these extreme stories of recognizing people," says Russell. "They recognize a person who was shopping in the same store with them two months ago, for example, even if they didn't speak to the person. It doesn't have to be a significant interaction; they really stand out in terms of their ability to remember the people who were actually less significant."

One woman in the study said she had identified another woman on the street who served as her as a waitress five years earlier in a different city. Critically, she was able to confirm that the other woman had in fact been a waitress in the different city. Often, super-recognizers are able to recognize another person despite significant changes in appearance, such as aging or a different hair color.

If face recognition abilities do vary, testing for this may be important for assessing eyewitness testimony, or for interviewing for some jobs, such as security or those checking identification.

Russell theorizes that super-recognizers and those with face-blindness may only be distinguishable today because our communities differ from how they existed thousands of years ago.

"Until recently, most humans lived in much smaller communities, with many fewer people interacting on a regular basis within a group," says Russell. "It may be a fairly new phenomenon that there's even a need to recognize large numbers of people."

###

The research was funded by the U.S. National Eye Institute and the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council.

Radio Program touches on Faceblindness

Something You Should Know radio program - The Crazy Things People Do

Transcripts   August 8, 2008 The Crazy Things People Do Interview with Andrew Williams, author of Are You Crazy? Mike Carruthers: People are weird. So many people do so many weird things that maybe being weird is normal. For example, do you know a lot of people suffer from something called face blindness? Andrew Williams: Approximately 5 million Americans are believed to suffer with face blindness. And face blindness is the inability to recognize people from their faces. Andrew Williams, author of the book Are You Crazy?... Individuals who have this cannot recognize their children, their spouses, people they work with; and those people who have it often report that if they stand on their head and look at faces upside-down, it's easier for them to recognize the individual. It just may be that we all have something weird about us so maybe we need to be a little more understanding of people who have things like face blindness . . . At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.

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dori

646-734-5211

Condition That Makes Prosopagnosia Even More Difficult

Prosopagnosia Radio interview: "There was an interview on BBC today (Monday 27th) - Brad Duchaine talking about phonagnosia......

Hear it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/pm/

It's about 45 mins into the programme."
Scroll the circular indicator to 41 minutes; the interview ends at around 46 minutes.

The story is about a woman who can't distinguish voices so she can't identify people
she knows by their voice. Brad Duchaine was interviewed

Taxi drivers 'have brain sat-nav'

Here is an article of interest from BBC News website for those with Topographic Agnosia, an orientation disorder which often appears in people who have prosopagnosia.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Taxi drivers 'have brain sat-nav': "Taxi drivers 'have brain sat-nav'
By Elizabeth Mitchell
Science reporter, BBC News

Sid James in a London cab (BBC)
The knowledge: London cabbies are famous for knowing their way around

Scientists have uncovered evidence for an inbuilt 'sat-nav' system in the brains of London taxi drivers.

They used magnetic scanners to explore the brain activity of taxi drivers as they navigated their way through a virtual simulation of London's streets.

Different brain regions were activated as they considered route options, spotted familiar landmarks or thought about their customers.

The research was presented at this week's BA Science Festival.

Earlier studies had shown that taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus - a region of the brain that plays an important role in navigation.

Their brains even 'grow on the job' as they build up detailed information needed to find their way around London's labyrinth of streets - information famously referred to as 'The Knowledge'.

'We were keen to go beyond brain structure - and see what activity is going on inside the brains of taxi drivers while they are doing their job,' said Dr Hugo Spiers from University College London.

Taxi driver's brain
(click on diagram to enlarge)

The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to obtain 'minute by minute' brain images from 20 taxi drivers as they delivered customers to destinations on "virtual jobs".

The scientists adapted the Playstation2 game "Getaway" to bring the streets of London into the scanner.

After the scan - and without prior warning - the drivers watched a replay of their performance and reported what they had been thinking at each stage.

"We tried to peel out the common thoughts that taxi drivers tend to have as they drive through the city, and then tie them down to a particular time and place," said Dr Spiers.

The series of scans revealed a complex choreography of brain activity as the taxi drivers responded to different scenarios.

The hippocampus was only active when the taxi drivers initially planned their route, or if they had to completely change their destination during the course of the journey.

The scientists saw activity in a different brain region when the drivers came across an unexpected situation - for example, a blocked-off junction.

Another part of the brain helped taxi drivers to track how close they were to the endpoint of their journey; like a metal detector, its activity increased when they were closer to their goal.

Changes also occurred in brain regions that are important in social behaviour.

Taxi driving is not just about navigation: "Drivers do obsess occasionally about what their customers are thinking," said Dr Spiers.

Animals use a number of different mechanisms to navigate - the Sun's polarized light rays, the Earth's magnetic fields and the position of the stars.

This research provides new information about the specific roles of areas within the brains of expert human navigators.

"Something You Should Know" - Mentions Faceblindness

Transcript from radio show "Something You Should Know" with Mike Carruthers

August 8, 2008
The Crazy Things People Do
Interview with Andrew Williams, author of Are You Crazy?

---

Mike Carruthers:
People are weird. So many people do so many weird things that maybe being weird is normal. For example, do you know a lot of people suffer from something called face blindness?

Andrew Williams:
Approximately 5 million Americans are believed to suffer with face blindness. And face blindness is the inability to recognize people from their faces.

Andrew Williams, author of the book Are You Crazy?...

Individuals who have this cannot recognize their children, their spouses, people they work with; and those people who have it often report that if they stand on their head and look at faces upside-down, it's easier for them to recognize the individual.

It just may be that we all have something weird about us so maybe we need to be a little more understanding of people who have things like face blindness or something called pica.

Pica, or P I C A, this is eating foods that are not usually food items: coins, ash, cigarette butts, soap and coffee grounds.

It often starts in childhood, says Andrew, when kids start putting strange things in their mouths and an extreme case of pica…

It happened just last year where a 62-year-old man went to the emergency room because he had a total of 360 coins in his stomach.

And speaking of eating things…

There are individuals who are afraid to eat what they refer to as concealed food. And that is food that they can't see the inside of. So something like ravioli, they would be afraid to eat it because they don't know what's inside.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet » Blog Archive » Face Blindness

Follow this link for a video of the Prosopagnosia segment this morning (Jan 5th) on this FOX morning show. Much longer segment than I usually see. They did a good job letting the people with prosopagnosia try and explain what it is like and how they cope. Brad Duchaine provided the credibility, being one of the top researchers in this field It is so exciting to see this kind of mainstream coverage!

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet » Blog Archive » Face Blindness: "Videos » Health »

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Face Blindness
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Can you imagine a world where you never see a single familiar face? M&J take an in-depth look at a medical condition whose sufferers can’t recognize other people — including their own children!

For more on this topic, visit http://www.faceblind.org"

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet

There will be a feature on prosopagnosia today on this FOX morning show.

Brad Duchaine the well known London Prosopagnosia researcher, will be on the show around 9am, live via satellite from L.A. In the New York Studio, there will be a handfull of prosopagnosics to discuss their condition with the hosts. More media coverage to spread the word!