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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

It'd be fun to try that test - I find myself noting the similarities between people "X looks like Y", and people nod along.

Maybe I'm not material for their special unit, though: one that completely escaped me is that George from Blackadder is one and the same as Dr. House: Hugh Laurie.

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Here are some tests for talent (or lack of talent) in this area:

https://greenwichuniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e3x...

http://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/6744428/data/david-white27s-face...

http://www.testmybrain.org/SupersRecruitment.html

http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff_intro.php

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experi...

I'm not totally face blind, but I'm definitely impaired. I recognize people I see regularly just fine if they are in a familiar context. In other situations, rely more heavily on voice, gait, and haircut. The idea of choosing movies based on "favorite actor" makes no sense to me.

On tests such as these, I'm happy when I get the "do you understand the instructions" training questions right. Sometimes I can pick a face that I've just seen out of a short lineup based on verbal description of a single feature ("bushy eyebrows" or "full lips"), but usually I'm just purely guessing, hoping that my subconscious has the fabled "blind sight" that I can't consciously access.

I just did the greenwich one. That was fun - thanks. One complicating factor is that they re-use faces in the lineups, so you end up recognizing people from two faces ago. (intentional, no doubt).

I did that one, as well. 9/14, which is a lot better than I expected - I did "cheat" though. I picked details on their faces, and concentrated on remembering them.

I have aphantasia (to a degree). For example, I had difficulty recognizing my mother when she dyed her hair a few years ago.

Thanks for introducing me to aphantasia, which I hadn't heard of. For others that haven't, it means not being able to imagine images or sounds in your mind. It was only discovered recently, and I think it was popularised by this blog post by Blake Ross, which is well worth a read.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-...

Thanks for these.

I have realised that I am perfectly average at recognising faces getting 79% on the bbk test and 10 out of 14 on greenwich, however I don't recognise people that well. I hadn't realised there is a difference.

Anybody come across this?

Ouch, I got 31% correct in the first one (average is 85%). I always knew I was bad with faces, but I guess I might have prosopagnosia.

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