Facing The Truth: Discovering Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness) In Adulthood

Unrecognizable: The Shock of Realizing I Have Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness) In Adulthood

Could YOU be Face Blind and not even know it? 

I'm Face Blind. However, I did not understand this part of myself for the first thirty-six years of my life. 

Cambridge Face Memory Test - Thank you for taking part in this experiment. Thank you for volunteering to be involved in research at Birkbeck; a researcher will be in touch. Your Accuracy in the experiment was 47%. The average score on this test is around 80% correct responses for adult participants. A score of 60% or below may indicate face blindness.

Face Blindness, also known as Prosopagnosia, is a condition that can cause a person to have difficulty with recognizing and remembering faces. 

There are two types of Prosopagnosia: 

• Apperceptive Prosopagnosia - where you struggle to recognize people's facial expressions and/or other non-verbal cues.

• Associative Prosopagnosia is where you struggle to recognize people's faces (even if you know and are familiar with them).

Face Blindness is NOT a problem with someone's eyes or vision. 

Like other NeuroDivergent brain differences, Face Blindness is an experience of the mind (making it difficult or impossible to process, interpret, and store facial information the way people without face blindness do). 

Face Blindness occurs along a spectrum, meaning those who are Face Blind will experience different degrees of difficulty recognizing faces. We can also develop skills and coping mechanisms, allowing us to navigate the world (and recognize people) in other ways. 

While many people who are Face Blind are this way from childhood (I was), Face Blindness can also be acquired through brain injury or other neurological life events. 

With Acquired Face Blindness, people suddenly find themselves unable to identify people around them. 

Becoming Face Blind after a lifetime of being able to recognize and decode faces and suddenly losing that skill (with no coping mechanisms to compensate for that loss) must be a distressing feeling. However, it is not one I can relate to. 

Because I have been Face Blind my entire life, I have developed tools and coping skills that allow me to recognize people in other ways (that don't depend on facial information). 

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I've never written about my experience with Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness) before. 

Though I'd suspected I had some trouble with Face Blindness since my Autism diagnosis (over seven years ago now), I had dismissed the idea I could be clinically Face Blind because of my ability to recognize people via other means (the coping skills I'd developed to compensate for not being able to memorize faces). 

I memorize people's voices, footsteps, haircuts, unique style features, or how they move.

Haircuts and style are quicker to learn but tricky (if people change their hair or style, I may not recognize them the next time we meet).

Once I've known someone long enough, I may be able to identify them via the sounds they make and how they move - but these observations take more time to gather and memorize than a few quick-style notes do. 

That's what we do when we have invisible differences other people don't have patience or compassion for; we hide them, don't talk about them, and learn ways to compensate for weaknesses people around us don't understand or appreciate. 

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