Diagnosing prosopagnosia

Many people who have problems recognizing faces do not know that they suffer from prosopagnosia. There is still a rather limited understanding of this condition among both the general population and the scientific community. However, if a person does not recognize faces well, he or she is usually referred to a neuropsychologist or a researcher. The person is then subjected to some tests and has to answer personal questions on the subject.

Examples of such tests to help diagnose prosopagnosia are:

  • Recognizing famous faces
  • Recognizing differences or similarities between two faces
  • Learning faces and recognizing them later
  • Recognizing emotion, age and gender

Questions that will be asked are:

  • Please describe some incidents in which you have been unable to recognize other people.
  • How do you typically recognize others?
  • when did you realise that you might have face recognition problems?
  • Have you ever experienced brain damage, brain surgery, head trauma, amblyopia (lazy eye), strabismus, cataracts early in life, severe untreated myopia, or other serious visual problems?
  • Do you believe that you have any other face processing difficulties such as reading facial expressions, eye gaze, sex, age, or attractiveness from the face?
  • do you believe that you have trouble recognising non-facial objects such as cars, animals, or places?
  • do you believe that your navigational abilities are poor compared to others?
  • do you think that any of your family members share your difficulties with faces or have other neurological problems?
  • do you think that you have any other neurological problems? 

Sources

  1. face recognition information questions, Brad Duchaine (04.2021), https://www.faceblind.org/research/
  2. Prosopagnosia (face blindness), o.A. (01.05.2019), https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/face-blindness/