A minor question about faceblindness...

[conuly]

You've all heard by now my story about the time I failed to recognize my own niece and brother-in-law, right?

Other than that one time, I haven't ever had such a bad experience. The next worst times were when it took a couple of seconds (rather than a quarter minute) to identify my sister - and at the time, she was changing her hairstyle often, dying it, cutting it, and so on, so I don't consider that too unusual.

However, I've been thinking on this lately, and I've noticed that it does take me several beats to recognize that I don't know somebody. I see my mother, I know she's my mother - but I see a random woman with hair kinda like hers, or something, and it takes me a little bit to say "nope, not Mommy!"

Is that normal, or...?

Comments

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

I just don't have a good visual memory, so it takes me a while to recognize people. I call it "faceblindness" sometimes just because it's a nice label, but I do actually recognize, just slowly.

However, I have experienced the accidental-recognition thing. I think, though, it's based more on how I generally recognize the people I'm with--I identify people by clothing. So if my mom's wearing a purple shirt one day, and we go someplace, I might end up trying to talk to some poor random woman with a purple shirt. That, uh.. that happens sometimes. I hate it.

Also, dying her hair? That's just not healthy. Tsk tsk.