The New Yorker had a feature about this very issue not too long ago (more than a week, more than a month, probably not more than six months -- actually, I think it was toward the end of August). The writer was one of their regular neurologist-writers (Oliver Sacks, maybe?), and he was discussing both his own extreme difficulties with face recognition and what we seem to know about the underlying neurology.
The consensus seems to be that it's a continuum, and that where you fall on that continuum is likely a matter of hardwiring. Some of us are rotten at it; some unfortunate few are so rotten at it as to be essentially face-blind; at the other end of the continuum you have the legendary politicians who never do forget a face, and who can and do recognize people they met once, forty years ago, the instant they lay eyes on them again. I'm bad enough at it to believe that some people simply see in a way that I can't -- it makes more sense to me than it would to believe that they're somehow paying attention in ways that I don't.
Anyway, it's an interesting piece, and probably goes into more detail on the issue than you would ever need.
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Date: 2 Dec 2010 09:47 pm (UTC)The consensus seems to be that it's a continuum, and that where you fall on that continuum is likely a matter of hardwiring. Some of us are rotten at it; some unfortunate few are so rotten at it as to be essentially face-blind; at the other end of the continuum you have the legendary politicians who never do forget a face, and who can and do recognize people they met once, forty years ago, the instant they lay eyes on them again. I'm bad enough at it to believe that some people simply see in a way that I can't -- it makes more sense to me than it would to believe that they're somehow paying attention in ways that I don't.
Anyway, it's an interesting piece, and probably goes into more detail on the issue than you would ever need.