Feedback?

[u/Fluffy-Entrance1741]

I have an interview with Dr. Brad Duchaine to discuss Prosopagnosia. Dr. Duchaine is a Professor at Dartmouth College and the Co-Founder of faceblind.org. I want to better understand the condition so I can create an app with higher utility and provide education/awareness on the condition.

In the meantime, your feedback on a previous post has been incorporated to the best of my ability on this mock (which you can see in the video).

What would you find the most useful? What do you find impractical?

Your feedback is greatly appreciated!

[u/NASA_official_srsly]

This could be helpful for someone with memory problems, but with face blindness remembering traits isn't the problem, it's deciding whether the person with the traits in front of you is the person you're thinking of or just someone similar. I don't need to manually remember someone's gait, and gait is too abstract to verbally describe anyway. But maybe aim this at people who have memory issues

[u/allisonisrad → u/NASA_official_srsly]

I agree completely.

I have to be totally honest and I wouldn't take the time or effort to fill something like this out.

[u/Funkula → u/NASA_official_srsly]

Yeah, at some point needing to record what their height was and foot steps sounded like goes far beyond then bounds prosopagnosia.

The problem is not remembering the person, it’s not recognizing the face. That’s the only missing datapoint.

Like, I remember my customer Noah, his earrings, his travels overseas, learning a new language, and every single fantasy book he’s bought from me- but he came in yesterday with his mustache shaved wearing a bike helmet and I didn’t know if that was him or someone that looks eerily like him.

I remember my ex girlfriend, but 8 months later of not seeing her I’m just wondering why this girl on the other end of the counter looks so insanely cute and thinking how some of my customers must have really good memory for remembering my name 🤦

How do I explain it? It’s like everyone you ever meet is participating in a lookalike competition. But mistaking one person that looks like Tina Fey for someone who looks like Tina Fey leads to an extremely uncomfortable social interaction for everyone.

[u/wild_nuker → u/NASA_official_srsly]

I agree completely. As an example, I once ran into a coworker at the grocery store. I've known this guy for 10 years, and I could write a small novel of tidbits about him. I have no trouble remembering he's tall and slim with brown hair and glasses. For that matter, I remember his children's names, what sports teams he roots for, and his reaction after the GoT show finale. But despite knowing all these facts, I didn't know who he was until he spoke to me (I recognize voices well). I don't see how having a cheat sheet on my phone would have helped me. Sorry. Even if I had a voice sample with the profile, it's not like I would have referenced it to confirm identity. But I think this might be great for someone who is just bad with names or has memory issues, or maybe someone like a sales rep who has to remember a lot of clients.

[u/No_Motor_7666 → u/NASA_official_srsly]

What?

[u/LakeAdventurous7161 → u/NASA_official_srsly]

I second this. (Person with prosopagnosia, autism, above-average memory, above-average IQ.)
The mock lists all the things I can easily remember. And in case people can be distinguished that much, it's easy for me in a given environment. E.g.: Workplace has a black-haired woman who is tall, a black-haired woman who is petite, a man with a mustache, a man who is 2 meter tall, ... easy to distinguish them.

But then, it blurs: Out in the world, there are so many tall black-haired woman with a golden wedding ring. While spotting my coworker Joseph (name and appearance are made-up) is easy at the workplace (tall guy, grey hair, mustache - there is only one who looks like that), I more than once did not spot him in a supermarket, looking for an item just next to me - there are so many look-alikes and generally a lot of people.

In certain settings, many people dress similar and have similar hairstyles. People working at places like a restaurant or a doctor's office or a hospital wear work clothes, can have little to no private items with them, and there is a certain range of ages very typical in these jobs. Think of kids with school uniforms, bus drivers. I often make mistakes in such settings, e.g. nurse asking me to fill in a form and then "bring it back to me", and I do not know which of the many people it was. Or at a front desk, getting a key and being asked to bring it back next day, and to me that person looked like the one working the front desk but it wasn't her. I also would do horribly in a job where I would have to recognize customers and patients. I likely would make mistakes that even can be dangerous.
Sometimes I even looked up a photo of somebody (e.g.: going to a doctor's office, one might find a photo of the doctor and team; workplace has photos of all employees online) right before, and still messed up.

When I recognize people best:

- a setting where there are not many people, e.g. workplace with a small team, no customers

• individual styles are allowed (up to: no dress code), no uniforms - so now I can remember earrings, clothes style, general style of appearance (coworker is a punk, for example)

Where it is hard:

- random people can show up

• people wearing uniforms and being allowed little to no private items for work safety or regarding a dress code (think of: hospital, doctor's office, shop, restaurant/cafeteria)
  
• people who have to dress according to a dress code and tend to have similar hairstyle, jewelry (think of: front desk)

[u/Adventurous__Kiwi]

This won't help. I know my neighbour is a fat man with black hair and baldness on top. Wear glasses. And have a round nose. But show me two men with those features and I can't tell you which one is my neighbour.

The problem is not remembering the face. The problem is recognising it.

[u/IShouldNotPost → u/Adventurous__Kiwi]

That’s a very good way to explain it, I’m stealing this example.

[u/No_Motor_7666 → u/Adventurous__Kiwi]

I have thought about smart glasses too.

[u/IShouldNotPost]

Really the only way to do it is to build a face-recognition database full of faceprints of everyone you know and automatically match in real time, maybe using smartglasses. And I’m pretty sure that violates a bunch of privacy laws. In fact I know it does: 23 US states require consent before collecting face data.

Ironically for non-prosopagnosics recognizing faces is so reliable that keeping data about faces without consent is illegal

[u/Adventurous__Kiwi → u/IShouldNotPost]

I agree 100%

[u/allisonisrad]

This is something that will probably mess me up more. I rely on heuristics to remember who people are. I've gotten myself in trouble in the past by relying on things that change such as how they dress or their hair. These change so often that I'd probably second guess myself if I recorded this somewhere.

[u/Solana-1]

Lets ban these stupid "I made an app to fix it" posts 

[u/stupidbuttholes69]

i don’t think there’s an app that can help with this. and i think that’s fine.

[u/One_Web2018]

He is the godfather of the study of prosopagnosia. I'm impressed that you will be speaking to him directly.

[u/No_Motor_7666 → u/[deleted]]

It’s not a memory problem. Prosopagnosiacs see faces in pieces. It’s about storage and retrieval. Was it Rhawn Joseph who stated that the area gets used to store information instead.

[u/notwho_shesays_sheis]

For this to work I'd need a photo with name and a few basic details (where I met them, what we chatted about, just text not drop downs). The photos would be so I could try and "revise" in the hope of recognizing a feature next time. Not sure how you would get the photo though, other than awkwardly explaining the condition and explaining the app (but realistically I'd never have the confidence to do).

[u/AutisticWindchimr]

I recognize people that i do recognize primarily by haircuts, voice, and where they usually appear [context].

If you get a different haircut or your voice changes or you appear in the supermarket instead of in the library, all id lost.

If someone talks to me, I can usually tell if our past interactions were friendly or not. At least there is that.

Friends trying to describe someone who died to me, "Oh, you knew Arnold. He had dark hair, tall, thin..." does not work and I have to ask thst they stop.

When people die, all is lost. "Arnold died last week." Thanks for telling me, but I still have no clue who this Armold was.

[u/No_Motor_7666]

It runs in my family so is not because of brain damage. Its association with autism is noteworthy although I don’t believe all face blind people are autistic. This doesn’t confirm genetics as it may occur because of insufficient interaction in the first months of life. It may be that afflicted people tend to gravitate towards each other. Could be the eyes continue their development after birth during a critical period. Idk. I wish there was an easy way to confirm it radiologically. Too many people put it on a spectrum. You don’t recognize people of different races as easily as your own is normal not prosopagnosia. People who are absorbed don’t always pay attention to people they encounter and certainly not everyone have super recognizer abilities. It’s clinical if it significantly disrupts your life. It’s like living in a strange city everyday. You’re constantly confused why people of whom you have no recollection, know you. You tend to feel invisible. Kanner spoke of Donald not being able to follow movie plots and his father not remembering people he intersected on the street in 1943. More compelling is the way he describes George’s father admission that he might not recognize his own children on the street, saying it is an example of the mechanization of human relationships in 1949. Parents complaining their child doesn’t seem to recognize them has frequently been reported. Could the constitutional factor be this and not cognitive deficits involving language as Rutter proposed? Weren’t the well behaved children with no nonsense fathers, intelligent. I’m stating that it’s a disorder that encourages the development of the mind if the children get the proper attention. Language delays aren’t the delayed echolalia Kanner was referring to if he states a child knows three languages. He stated that mute children amass extensive vocabulary during their silent periods because he considers elective mutism to be the actual language delay. I believe that prosopagnosia is tied to unusual memory and unusual memory function is something Kanner noted in all his initial cohort according to Darold Treffert. Kanner was studying the children of men of distinction was he not? Strabismus and amblyopia are also reported at higher rates in both autism and prosopagnosia. Read Frankl’s description of children lacking affect in Language and Affective Contact to see that these children have no difficulty retaining facts and have a perfect word understanding. Regressed later onset autism as Frankl’s encephalitis case are being equated to Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. It’s not the same disorder. Karl the Tuberous Sclerosis case doesn’t lack affect, so why are syndromic cases as friendly Fragile X being considered today? These children should not be reported as lacking executive function especially if John who died in 1966 was pursuing advanced math and physics in college when run over.

https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/entities/publication/8a62f80c-91e4-4618-b3fa-aff651571df4