Prosopagnosia

What is prosopagnosia?

Prosopagnosia is often called face blindness and I describe as a dyslexia of faces to my students. It refers to a severe deficit in recognizing familiar people from their face. I'm seriously useless at other aspects of face processing, such as judging age or gender and recognising certain emotional expressions. 

I was once asked by a colleague to guess his age and after lots of insistence from him I did :( This was the thought process in my head:

     How old?
     Looks about 70
     Can't be that old - he'd have retired. So can't be 60
     Could be 55?
     He'd have taken early retirement, he hates school.
     Oh yes! So can't be 54 or 53 even as he'd have talked about impending retirement.
     Ok. So 50 then?
     Out loud:
     Me: 50?
     Him: 50? (Outrage!) I'll be 40 next month!!

I didn't dare say that I'd knocked 20 years off my initial thought...

How does prosopagnosia affect my life?

As a secondary school science teacher I meet lots of people everyday and most of them are a mystery to me! If you imagine a typical class (if you're not aphantasic you'll probably visualise them!) and describe them. The majority are white (in my current school), a similar height with brown hair and wearing school uniform. Without distinguishing between faces how do you identify them? If a student is particularly tall, or short, then that's a name I can learn with confidence. Other distinguishing characteristics help and after that I'm stuck! Most of my students are really understanding and don't take it personally when I get names wrong multiple times in a single lesson. The start of a new school year is always hard for me as all the names & faces I've learnt the previous year are gone and I have to start from the beginning again.

Staff names and faces is a different matter & generally colleagues are less accepting of my continual mistakes. That means I avoid starting conversations, other than saying hello, in corridors or staff room etc. and instead try to see people in own classrooms because I can learn which room belongs to who.

Prospognosia has meant that I've inadvertently upset people. When I was a child in junior school my Mum had her waist length hair cut during the school day. I walked out of school to see my younger brother being led by the hand by a complete stranger and screamed that she was kidnapping him. She wasn't, I didn't recognise my Mum with chin length hair. She was, understandably, upset that her daughter was screaming at her!

Dating can prove challenging... I went on a date with a bloke about 5'10" with brown hair and a blue shirt with a fine white stripe (you can probably guess where this is going). We had a few drinks and a lovely dinner. Everything was going really well until we went to another bar which was busy so we stood at the bat chatting with our drinks, I left to go to the toilet and returned to where we'd been stood and resumed the conversation. Except, he'd found a table and sat down and I was talking to a complete stranger. Oops! Date guy wasn't happy that, in his opinion, I was chatting someone else up whilst on a date with him. I did a double take between the two guys in similar shirts, same height and similar hair. How was I supposed to tell them apart? I tried to remind him of my 'face dyslexia' and he continued shouting at me. The other guy and his friends were lovely and interested in the reason for my confusion. They insisted that I join them and saw me to my train after we laughed a lot at my mistake. It is frustrating when people believe I'm being deliberately difficult and are disbelieving that prosopagnosia exists.

My sense of direction is impaired because of my aphantasia or prosopagnosia. I learn a route from a to b and c to d etc and am fine until I need to drive from b to d, for example, and cannot visualise where roads connect. It means I often drive more interesting routes than intended. Map apps on my phone are incredible as I can choose to use them and drive more direct and efficient routes. I always thought I was a bit stupid got not being able to grasp simple local geography and knowing it's not my fault is liberating.

• Why am I writing this bloglet?

I discuss my autism, aphantasia and prosopagnosia with my students and they always have questions. They appreciate my openness and honesty whilst the SEND students like that they have a teacher who's SEN. I realised that maybe other people have questions about these conditions too and I can play a small part in answering them. I really appreciate the response that I've had so far, thank you. I'm on Twitter as @NuttySalt if you'd like to ask anything.