A Guide Dog for the Face-Blind(asimov.blog) |
A Guide Dog for the Face-Blind(asimov.blog) |
Article links to this test: https://www.testmybrain.org/face-blindness/face-blindness.ht...
But this isn't the "famous faces" test.
I think they meant to link to this one: https://v3.testmybrain.org/digitallab/?study=digitallab_s4_2...
That website does some funny stuff with sessions.
Tangentially related: As a nearsighted kid--and unaware of it--I would mentally catalogue what color clothes my friends were wearing in the morning so that I could improve my odds of finding them during outdoor recess.
Naturally, the first time I got glasses: "Holy Moly you mean everybody sees like this!?"
Oh no. This explains some things.
For most people the only thing I can really use are things like distinctive hair or tattoos.
Context is also very important. Back when I still worked in a office I eventually learned the people I interacted with at work, but if I saw them in, say, a store dressed casually I probably wouldn’t recognize them, or at least not be sure enough it was them to approach.
(BTW, face blindness is another one of those things that tends to co-occur with autism. )
(Basically I just learnt to ignore him out of context too. It was only politeness that would otherwise incline me to acknowledge someone like that, so if they don't recognise me that just doesn't really apply, no need.)
Once you understand it there are quite a few coping mechanisms. I recognize people by their gait, voice, and clothing in addition to the glasses, hair etc that the author mentions.
I do think mine is somehow improving. I still scored badly but tbh I'm not really into celebrities so about half of them I either haven't heard of or I know about but have seen very seldom.
--
Your score ....................... 23
Average score .................. 30.87
You scored higher than zero out of every ten people who took this test: >
I don't understand how that factors in. It said my score was 34/40 but really it was 34/35. The rest I didn't know and I selected that I didn't know them.
You scored higher than two out of every ten people who took this test:
I do use hair, glasses, etc., but the flip side is that they are variable, whereas gait and voice are much harder to change. Good luck picking out Gary Oldman if you don't know he's in a movie; the man is a damned chameleon.
I knew most of the celebrities by name (there were a few complete whiffs and a few whose name I know but honestly have no idea what they look like - e.g., Cristiano Ronaldo). And most of the pairs looked nearly identical; in effect, my compensating technique was spotting the computer-generated image (which, based on my score, isn't all that effective).
Indeed, I almost gave up on it for that reason. Great story but does the character really need 6+ different ways to refer to them. "Too Like the Lightning" and its sequels are also great but Ada Palmer suffers from same of the same desires to refer to characters in far too many different ways to keep up with. That said, I also scored poorly on the face blindness test so maybe it's a cognitive inability keep up with too many names on my part.
Brandon Sanderson is another who has started to dip into this well and it's annoying there, too. Do I really have to remember that this character is named this amongst this group of people and named another thing amongst another group of people? Often, it's never even really explicitly stated that these two characters are the same and you end up having to refer to some wiki that probably has spoilers just because you find yourself wondering "am I supposed to know who this is?"
My wife scored much lower.
Also, I have met and noticed many celebrities (including Tony Hawk, who is famously hard to differentiate.) Whereas my wife has met very few. It's surely related - she may have walked past just as many famous people as I have, but she wasn't aware of it.
BTW, last night I watched the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity", and had no idea it was starring Burt Lancaster.
It's embarrassing.
I scored right in the middle, but she scored better than nine out of every ten people. How about that!
Can anybody who has the condition chime in?
I scored worse than average on the celebrity faces test, but I chalk that up to be largely oblivious about pop culture.
I also spent many years in Russia, where I noticed that they have few names (just a dozen or so common ones for each sex) but a gazillion variations, depending on context (e.g. family, friends, work). My theory is that under Stalin, you didn't want to stick out, and a boring name like Natalya Ivanovna was less likely to be noticed and remembered. Your trusted friends could have some unique nickname for you, like Natulya. But I never read War & Peace--it sounds like the naming practice predates Stalin. My Russian daughter is currently reading the book, so I'll have to discuss it with her.