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