Face blindness is the lack of ability to recognize individual faces, even faces of close relatives, or in severe cases, someone’s own faces. The medical term for face-blindness is prosopagnosia.
There are different types and causes of face-blindness. Most of the practical situations that include face-blindness are observed after causing a stressful injury to the mind or at initial stages of Alzheimer's disease. In these situations, the patients know that they were able to identify the faces in the past, and it is often a surprise to lose this ability.
•Apperceptive Face-blindness:
In Apperceptive face-blindness, people do not know how to comprehend faces at all, and may be incapable to say whether two faces are identical or different.
•Associative Face-blindness:
In associative face-blindness, people can usually say whether two faces are identical or different, and may even recognize an acquaintance’s age or sex in accordance with the face alone, but still cannot present the details such as name, profession or when they last saw the person.
•Developmental Face-blindness:
Developing face-blindness is a long term condition, not caused due to brain injury. The patient has no storage of being able to recognize the faces. This type of face-blindness can run in family members, and it is sometimes associated with non-verbal learning problem and autism. Persons suffering with developmental face-blindness have problems with social abilities, because everyone appears to them as a unfamiliar person, and have trouble following the plots of films and TV shows, because all of the characters’ faces look the same for those people. Children with face-blindness move toward cartoons because each personality would wear an exclusive outfit.
The lack of ability to identify emotions is also sometimes confused with face-blindness. Most of the people with face-blindness are capable of identifying the feelings depending on the face expression, but it is possible for an individual to have problems in acknowledging both faces and feelings.
There are different types and causes of face-blindness. Most of the practical situations that include face-blindness are observed after causing a stressful injury to the mind or at initial stages of Alzheimer's disease. In these situations, the patients know that they were able to identify the faces in the past, and it is often a surprise to lose this ability.
In Apperceptive face-blindness, people do not know how to comprehend faces at all, and may be incapable to say whether two faces are identical or different.
•Associative Face-blindness:
In associative face-blindness, people can usually say whether two faces are identical or different, and may even recognize an acquaintance’s age or sex in accordance with the face alone, but still cannot present the details such as name, profession or when they last saw the person.
•Developmental Face-blindness:
Developing face-blindness is a long term condition, not caused due to brain injury. The patient has no storage of being able to recognize the faces. This type of face-blindness can run in family members, and it is sometimes associated with non-verbal learning problem and autism. Persons suffering with developmental face-blindness have problems with social abilities, because everyone appears to them as a unfamiliar person, and have trouble following the plots of films and TV shows, because all of the characters’ faces look the same for those people. Children with face-blindness move toward cartoons because each personality would wear an exclusive outfit.
The lack of ability to identify emotions is also sometimes confused with face-blindness. Most of the people with face-blindness are capable of identifying the feelings depending on the face expression, but it is possible for an individual to have problems in acknowledging both faces and feelings.
