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I thought this story was interesting enough to share on ASF. It examines the wide disparity between people who can barely recognise themselves in a mirror and those who magically seem to remember everyone they have ever seen.
“Most of us assume that our conscious experience is roughly the same as everyone else’s,” writes Sadie Dingfelder.
What’s it like to be a super-recognizer? Today, we bring you two unusual stories.
By Freya Sanders
September 21, 2024
Oh my God! Caroline! Hi! What are you doing here?
Sorry. . . Who are you?
It’s never not awkward. You see someone who went to your high school in, say, a coffee shop in Canada, and bound over to say hello, only to find they don’t recognize you.
We’ve all been there. But Jana Kozlowski ends up there more often than most. That’s because she’s what’s known as a “super-recognizer.” Yes, that is the scientific term. And yes, she has done a test, confirming that she’s in the top 2 percent of the population when it comes to facial recognition. In practice, that means that she very often says to her husband, “Look, there’s that actor who played a receptionist for 10 seconds in a decade-old Netflix show.”
And she regularly has to tell people who’ve forgotten her: “We worked in different departments of the same company of 5,000 people, six years ago!”
It’s equally awkward to be the other person in this scenario, though: To be the one who has to say, “Um, have we met?” This is a position Sadie Dingfelder finds herself in all the time, because she’s the opposite of a super-recognizer—she’s face blind. She’ll make a plan to have dinner with a friend, then won’t recognize him when he shows up. She mistook a stock image for her own cousins. Sadie has a neurological condition known as prosopagnosia, which means she’s in the bottom 2 percent of the population for facial recognition. This puts her, according to one Harvard scientist, “on par with a mediocre or below-average macaque.”
Today, we’re bringing you the stories of these two women, who see the world so differently than the vast majority of Americans—but whose experiences bear a striking resemblance. Jana had no idea she was a super-recognizer until she got bored during the pandemic and Googled “good at people face memory am i genius.” Sadie was 40 when she heard about a researcher who was trying to train people to get better at facial recognition—and, by signing up for the study, discovered that she’s “legit face blind.”
www.thefp.com
“Most of us assume that our conscious experience is roughly the same as everyone else’s,” writes Sadie Dingfelder.
‘I’m Face Blind. Here’s What It’s Like.’ Plus…
What’s it like to be a super-recognizer? Today, we bring you two unusual stories.
By Freya Sanders
September 21, 2024
Oh my God! Caroline! Hi! What are you doing here?
Sorry. . . Who are you?
It’s never not awkward. You see someone who went to your high school in, say, a coffee shop in Canada, and bound over to say hello, only to find they don’t recognize you.
We’ve all been there. But Jana Kozlowski ends up there more often than most. That’s because she’s what’s known as a “super-recognizer.” Yes, that is the scientific term. And yes, she has done a test, confirming that she’s in the top 2 percent of the population when it comes to facial recognition. In practice, that means that she very often says to her husband, “Look, there’s that actor who played a receptionist for 10 seconds in a decade-old Netflix show.”
And she regularly has to tell people who’ve forgotten her: “We worked in different departments of the same company of 5,000 people, six years ago!”
It’s equally awkward to be the other person in this scenario, though: To be the one who has to say, “Um, have we met?” This is a position Sadie Dingfelder finds herself in all the time, because she’s the opposite of a super-recognizer—she’s face blind. She’ll make a plan to have dinner with a friend, then won’t recognize him when he shows up. She mistook a stock image for her own cousins. Sadie has a neurological condition known as prosopagnosia, which means she’s in the bottom 2 percent of the population for facial recognition. This puts her, according to one Harvard scientist, “on par with a mediocre or below-average macaque.”
Today, we’re bringing you the stories of these two women, who see the world so differently than the vast majority of Americans—but whose experiences bear a striking resemblance. Jana had no idea she was a super-recognizer until she got bored during the pandemic and Googled “good at people face memory am i genius.” Sadie was 40 when she heard about a researcher who was trying to train people to get better at facial recognition—and, by signing up for the study, discovered that she’s “legit face blind.”
‘I’m Face Blind. Here’s What It’s Like.’ Plus…
What’s it like to be a super-recognizer? Today, we bring you two unusual stories.
www.thefp.com
