Face Recognition: Context-Dependant?

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In other words, in at least some Autistic individuals, facial recognition deficits are not typical of prosopagnosia.

There is nothing in either of the two abstracts to suggest that the face processing is not done by the right fusiform gyrus. In particular, "However, individuals with ASD do not typically exhibit the striking behavioral deficits that might be expected to result from fusiform gyrus damage, such as those seen in prosopagnosia, and their deficits appear to extend well beyond face identification to include a wide range of impairments in social perceptual processing. "

http://www.researchgate.net/publication ... r_artifact

This one gives a good overview of previous research and both points of view.

You disagree with me and I with you. That's ok with me, I am disinclined to waste time and energy on arguing the difference between our viewpoints.

Note that the papers you present are about Autism rather than Prosopagnosia. I readily concede that many people with Autism may have problems with identifying faces that are due to other factors than due to problems with the right fusiform gyrus. I think that should be rather intuitively obvious. I also find it very doubtful that the problems of every Autistic person who has a problem with identifying faces is not Prosopagnosia.

Instead of thinking there is damage, or a problem with your brain, perhaps it is just a different way to use it. Like pattern thinking.

It is probable that the way one thinks depends on the structure of the particular brain. For example, someone with great mathematical talent has a brain that is built in such a way as to be able to do mathematics.

There are two forms of prosopagnosia. Acquired prosopagnosia is the result of some damage to the brain, usually either from an accident or disease. In developmental prosopagnosia (sometimes congenital prosopagnosia), the brain was formed that way.

Of the two, acquired prosopagnosia is normally the more serious with more extensive damage. While there are notable exceptions (see The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat), people with developmental prosopagnosia are more likely to have some ability to recognize people and to be able to cope with the problem.

For me face recognition is very context dependant. I actually walked right past my boss at the local fall fair - he had to grab my arm as I walked past him. Didn't see him at all standing there and we've worked together for a decade.

^^^ I'm not me anymore . I shapeshifted into a winking cougar. Can you see me now?

This actually happens to me quite a bit... It can be rather embarrassing...

I wonder if having difficulty recognizing people outside a familiar context has more to do with memory retrieval than literal face recognition. I feel like my brain just doesn't register a face it doesn't expect to see. Sometimes I realize the person looks familiar to me, but I just can't remember where I know them from. It's like I recognize the face, but I just can't match it to any context within my memory. I depend on external context (environment, hair, glasses, clothing).

But sometimes I also have a hard time telling people apart if they look similar, such as siblings. That seems more like a problem seeing the details of the face, rather than a memory problem.

I think it was a different thread where I mentioned this but I never have trouble recognizing celebrities on those face blindness tests. I can recognize people in photos okay, but it's harder to do it in real life.

It does indeed.
i don't really recognize faces in the first place, i realise who i'm dealing with using other indicators (voice, clothing, body shape, hairline...). after i know who is standing in front of me, i can see if something changed on their faces, but face alone isn't enough to know who someone is (barring a select few exceptions, my close family i know wel enough to recognize 'face-value')

I honestly didn't recognize you online with your new avatar until I read this post.

I didn't know Cougars could wink.

To me, it's mostly a problem with face recognition, rather than a problem with recall.

How is that different?

Face recognition is not the problem of recognizing whether or not some object is a face (that would be something else) but one of being able to identify the face when seeing it again.

Well I think the difference is being able to distinguish the details of a face, vs. being able to put a name and history with a face.

I have some problems with both, but seems to me like it's more often the latter and it's very dependent on context. I think context is what gives me the memory trigger to recognize someone.

Of course we recognize a face as a face, but it's a matter of being able to recognize the distinct features that make it individual.

It's also possible that if we do not look at people closely, or have trouble perceiving the face as a whole, it simply does not get committed to memory in a normal way.

When I think about what people look like, faces of people that I KNOW and would always recognize, I tend remember distinct parts of the face separately (eyes, mouth, chin, etc.). It's hard for me to see an entire face as a whole picture in my memory.

However if I think about a photo of someone I've seen recently, or have seen often, I can see the whole face very clearly in my mind. So I'm thinking there's something about seeing faces in 3D that I have trouble with.

I finally figured out how to shrink a picture. . Didn't really like the american biker too much anyways. It was a WP avatar. He was scary!