Face blindness vs. inabilty to visualize: some thoughts on recognizing dogs and people

Reading a post on face blindness, watching a yellow lab in the back yard, and it occurred to me that my difficulty recognizing faces may be less face blindness and more another symptom of my inability to visualize.

This dog (next door at Devon's grandfather's 80th birthday party) was a handsome yellow lab which looked remarkable but for the longest time I could not figure out why. It took half an hour of idle gazing before I was able to describe the distinction as broad. It was a big handsome male yellow lab, which isn't all that unusual; but it was very wide, very broad, a big barrel chest and a wide panting mouth. I grew up around labs, they're some of my favorite dogs, in short I am intimately familiar with their general appearance and the variations within. But it took me a good while to figure out what made this dog unique—because while I know labs quite well, I can't conjure up their image in my mind and so I had no image of "default lab" to use as a comparison.

This is certainly one reason that I have a difficult time recognizing people. (Other reasons include my poor visions sans glasses, making faces a blur from a few paces, and my poor memory for names.) I can't conjure up the mental image of someone's face, no matter my familiarity with that person. Seeing someone for the first time, I can't mentally compare their features to those I've seen before and put together unconscious mnemonics for recognizing their face again. When seeing someone for the second time, I can't leaf through a mental book of faces for comparison or identification. When I've seen someone a number of times it gets a bit easier because I can recognize voice, posture, movement, and I can recognize their face when I see it—because I know it outright, and don't need to compare it against a remembered image of their face.

But still, even with someone I know as intimately as the boy, I can't pull up a mental image of that person's face.

Oddly it's hair that often saves me. Hair is less indistinguishable when I'm without glasses, and I have a general fondness for it. Because it's easier to see, because my brain is more likely to notice it, it's what I look for first in a person, to categorize them and to identify them later. As a result, however, I find haircuts incredibly disorientating—so much so that when Devon cuts his hair I draw away from him for a day or two while I adjust. (My own haircuts don't disorientate me, in part because my hair is always long, even when I cut off six inches; in part because I always find my own face disorientating, haircut or no.)

I may still have a mild case of face blindness, which is apparently not too rare—but I've not found enough about it to know just what symptoms and at what severity it entails. But my inability to place the physical variation in that yellow lab wasn't face blindness. I expect that my inability to form mental images has more of an impact on my life than I've previously been aware of. It impacts how I imagine characters and settings and likewise how I write them, it renders a some written horror ineffective and some visual horror hyper-effective, it makes it difficult for me to approximate distance or imagine anything in 3D, big and little things like that which I keep noticing, these days.

Curious, interesting, perhaps—at least it is to me. (Randomly searching this subject: I'm not the only one! I even found a personal account of a man that thinks with words in place of images. I've never run into another person with this particular quirk, and so this quite interests me. Not that I needed reassurance but, well, companionship is nice.)

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Published: New York: Scholastic Press, 2008
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 374
Total Page Count: 76,711
Text Number: 225
Read For: personal enjoyment, borrowed from the library
Short Review: Once a year, the Capitol choses two youthes from each of its twelve districts to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death. When her sister is selected, Kantiss volunteers herself and so begins a journey to the Capitol and to the arena where she must use all of her skills—and perhaps sacrifice her morality—in order to survive. Something of a flashy Battle Royale, The Hunger Games is compulsively readable and yet, filled with moral quandaries, unexpectedly intelligent. Unfortunately, its televised gloss and forced romance drag it down. While the book could be better, on the whole I enjoyed and recommend it.

( Long review. )

Review posted here on Amazon.com.

(no subject)

When I say that Dude acts like a dog and follows me around the house, what I mean is: (As happened in the hallway not half an hour ago.)

YOURS TRULY: [Emerges from bathroom to find cat, DUDE, in the hallway. Bends down to pet cat. Dog, WOOF, comes down the hallway and asks to be pet.]
BOY'S DAD: [Emerges from master bedroom into hallway; halts, as hallway is now impassable.]
BOY'S DAD: There seems to be a cat.
WOOF, THE DOG: [Hearing BOY'S DAD, runs over towards him.]
YOURS TRULY: Yes. He was waiting for me.
BOY'S DAD: He follows you around?
YOURS TRULY: Yes. I go into the hall, he goes into the hall. I go outside, he goes outside. I go into the bedroom, he goes into the bedroom.
YOURS TRULY: [Stands up, moves towards bedroom to clear the hallway.]
DUDE, THE CAT: [Follows.]
BOY'S DAD: So he does. That's funny, I have a dog that does the same thing.

Which is all the more humorous if you know that 1) Dude and Woof are both black and white, therefore similar in appearance, 2) Dude and Woof don't much get along.