Blind / Prosopagnosia Davis (2007)

¶ … blind / Prosopagnosia

Davis (2007) wrote that "Developmental prosopagnosia came to light in large part because of Internet groups. Before that, most people born with the condition assumed they were just bad with faces. it's not the type of thing most would go to a doctor about, and even if they did, their physician probably couldn't help, because many doctors are unaware of it. In many ways, this is a neurological condition discovered by Yahoo."

People saying "I'm bad with names too!" is a frequent response when one attempts to clarify problems of people who have not informed about prosopagnosia; not being able to remember a name is not the same as not knowing someone; if one does not recall a name, one however still identify whom they are talking to but if one do not recognize his or her face, one believes that he/she are having a conversation to a total stranger (Burman, 2002).

Choisser (2002) recounted in his website his experiences as being face blind, "once around mid-day I met my mother on the sidewalk and did not recognize her. We walked towards each other, and passed within two feet of each other, on a not-too-busy sidewalk in a neighborhood shopping district. The only way I know about this is because she told me about it that night. She was not amused at all by this incident, and she has never forgiven me for it. Another time I was on a hike with about twenty guys. The group spread out along a trail, and I talked for about half an hour with a guy in blue jeans. We parted, and after about fifteen minutes I began talking to a guy in red shorts. When I started the conversation with the usual introductory questions, he gave me a strange look and said we had just talked before. I denied having ever seen him before, and mentioned not having talked to anyone in red shorts. He said it had gotten warmer and he had ducked into some bushes to change. And then he recited back lots of the stuff we had talked about half an hour before."

Burman (2002) described prosopagnosia or face-blindness as a neurological condition that turns a person into being unable be familiar with faces which is not linked to the person's capability to see faces for someone with 20/20 vision can experience prosopagnosia; in the common brain there is a hub that is devoted to face recognition; prosopagnosia occurs when that special hub turn out to be damaged or else is not capable to execute its purpose.

Wainwright (2008) narrated his experiences that growing up with prosopagnosia were difficult, from his earliest recollections he can recall having trouble remembering people which inclined to make him shy and withdrawn -- he turned out to be bookish, unpopular at school and was being bullied; and he could not make friends since school uniforms made it not viable to remember anyone; he got to shirking often and fell far behind in school work so his parents became concerned about him and sent him to see a psychiatrist but the psychiatrist didn't know what was wrong with him; he was confused during his teenaged years through his 20s, voiding others at each instant, until he met his wife who changed his life by introducing her friends to him where he discovered how to mingle with others.

In general, people do not usually talk about how they recognize others for it is something they presume.

In an article found at ABC News (2007), it stated there that Psychologist Brad Duchaine has made it his life's work to study the prosopagnosia, he's evaluated hundreds of face blind people and said the sections of the brain is accountable for face recognition are often far less receptive in people experiencing from the condition; and to comprehend what face blind people see, he said, look at the above photo of a very famous person situated upside down -- the one in 50 people who are face blind perceive faces in this confounding manner; the popular name of the condition was taken from the more widespread color blindness -- Duchaine said that people refer to the condition as face blindness since they say 'just as some people can't perceive color, I can't perceive faces normally.

Davis (2007) stated that baseline testing must be performed at a young age so that children with prosopagnosia do not grow feelings of isolation and depression for now, there is no treatment available with prosopagnosia same with dyslexia or autism, however once parents become familiar with their child who have this condition, parents will be able to adjust with the situation, although it can be difficult emotionally, specifically if their child cannot identify them as his/her parents; on the contrary, it is not as good as when parents reprimand their child for something that can not be managed and for the children who have prosopagnosia, it can be reassuring to be acquainted with why their parent can be at times appear unaware to them.

Duchaine and Garrido (2008) said that the results are constant with face-specific processes, but it is also consistent with other accounts of face recognition, cases illustrating dissociations among impaired face identification and normal object identification are very helpful, however more examination is required in such cases to distinguish the mechanisms implementing face recognition for the reason that a number of cases of prosopagnosia recognize that face recognition and object recognition are dissociable, but do not suggest that deficits to face-specific mechanisms account for the dissociation -- for instance, Psychologist Martha Farah in1990 recommended a two-process theory of visual recognition that is composed of a holistic system and a parts-based system; faces were the archetypal stimulus for the holistic system, object recognition depended on one or both systems rely on the properties of the object, and word recognition relied on the parts-based system and the method foresees dissociations among unlike groups although does not include face-specific mechanisms; likewise, further descriptions of face-specific deficits that do not suggest face-specific mechanisms propose that the impaired mechanisms in such cases are focused on something other than faces.