Last night I watched an episode of Perception which featured ". . . an interesting twist . . . a condition that makes him unable to recognize faces." This is called prosopagnosia.
I have a touch of this. When I was about twelve, I once passed my mother on the street without recognizing her. I got new glasses. But I suspect there was more to it.
I still have a hard time with television shows that have more than one handsome dark-haired 30-ish man. I can't tell them apart.
I once lived in a cooperative household. We often had guests, house guests, dinner guests. On this occasion, friends of a housemate had been with us for a few days. I had talked with them several times.
At dinner one evening, at our long, full table – there would have been eight to ten of us – I sat at one end, with a guest to each side of me. At some point I noticed that, rather than two guests, as I had thought, there were three. I kept this surprising observation to myself.
Dinner went on, as usual, a long, active, conversational meal. Toward the end it dawned on me (and a slow dawning it was) that I was flanked by identical twins.
Perhaps it's more an attention disorder than a face-recognition disorder. Dogs, I recognize. Cats, I recognize. People, not so much.
[Click the image to see credits & larger sizes at flickr.]
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