Prosopagnosia Essay

Prosopagnosia, also called face blindness, is a neuropsychological condition that refers to impairment in the recognition of faces. Although prosopagnosic patients suffer from other types of recognition impairments (place recognition, car recognition, facial expression of emotion, est.), they experience face recognition problems above or over other types impairments. Prosopagnosia occurs without intellectual, sensory or cognitive impairments; in other words, people with prosopagnosia can still recognize people from non-facial cues. They cannot recognize familiar people by their faces alone, and often use alternative routes to alleviate the effects of this impairment. These routes include

Dr. P, a musician and teacher who had developed visual agnosia, had difficulty processing what he sees, especially faces, he could only identify them by features which he remembered. He only completed tasks if he was singing, if interrupted, he could no longer remember what he was doing nor complete it. Sacks diagnosed Dr. P with prosopagnosia, the inability to identify

In this particular case study, an eight year old child named Al, was diagnosed with Prosopagnosia. The analysis cultivated that Al was unable to achieve perceptions of faces for both

Both the fusiform gyrus and the inferior temporal gyrus are used in recognizing emotions made by faces. They help figure out what people are thinking just by looking at facial reactions. In people who have autism, these parts of the brain do not function normally so they are often unresponsive to the emotion written on people’s

The authors of this paper are interested in the psychological basis of the behavioural avoidance of people with facial disfigurement. Specifically, they are interested in how people respond to individuals with facial birth marks.

In adults, three variables were used to test the other-race effect on facial recognition: orientation, face type and ethnicity. Adults at least 18 years of age and older (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted adult and infant faces. Recognition was tested using a forced-choice procedure. 4 slides were shown during a trial to make sure participants understood the instructions. Next, participants viewed 48 slides with faces alternating between adult female and infant faces; first segment each face was upright, second segment faces were inverted. The results of the study found that there was no significance between race and facial recognition. Other research conducted has shown that race does in fact have a significant effect on facial recognition.

The studies conducted by Northwestern say that brain activity increases in the first 200 milliseconds when we first interact with a person from our same race or from a different race. The studies say that there is a time right after a person meets another of the same race or a different race that determines whether the face is remembered or even forgotten. The point where the brain begins to remember or forget the memory is almost immediately after a person first sees the face. People also remember people by their attributes for example, you might see that a face reminds you of someone you know. You may see that the persons expression appears kind or afraid, or it looks like the face of a famous athlete or a singer. Being able to identify people's attributes increases the likelihood that a face will be

Chuck Close suffers from Prosopagnosia also known as face blindness. He figured out a way of how he can remember faces. He takes a photo of them then, grid’s it out then paints it on a canvas five times its original size. He also creates portraits of his friends,

The main hypothesis being tested within the study was whether or not the fusiform gyrus was a Region of Interest (ROI) that specialised in the perception of the human face. This main hypothesis was confirmed in Part 1 of testing and was thus expanded in Part II and III, in which they eliminated alternative hypothesis.

Participants were shown each of the cards (a) to (d) in set 2, in order, for three seconds each. Participants were then asked to write down what they saw in each of the pictures, but their responses are not recorded by the experimenter. The purpose of this was to develop a perceptual set for faces based on the participant’s immediate past experience with the four pictures of faces.

Prosopagnosia is a condition where a person cannot recognise familiar faces, but only the features, not the whole face. The condition contradicts the model as it suggests that the process are most likely not separate. As most patients had severe problems with facial expression as well as facial identity, this suggests they are processed separately. The model can also be seen as reductionist, as it only gives a vague description of what the cognitive system does. However, there is research that does support the concept that there are two are separate paths for processing face recognition and facial expression. One being Humphreys, Avidan, and Behrmann (2007) who studied three participants with developmental prosopagnosia. All three had poor ability to recognise faces, but their ability to recognise facial expressions was similar to that of healthy

The distractions of driving are a popular area of research. Recent studies have looked at what distracts drivers and what other failures of awareness may contribute to traffic accidents. The goal of this paper is to look at research and explain how change blindness can possibly effect driving.

This essay will talk about face recognition and several reasons why it has been studied separately. The ability to recognise faces is of huge significance of people’s daily life and differs in important ways from other forms of object recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986). Than this essay will talk about the processes involved in face recognition which comes from the diversity of research about familiar and unfamiliar faces-it includes behavioural studies, studies on brain-damaged patients, and neuroimaging studies. Finally, it will discuss how face recognition differs from the recognition of other object by involving more holistic or configuration processing and different areas of the brain (Eysenck & Keane, 2005).

People with prosopagnosia cannot remember faces and they always fail to recognize people out of context, including their family, close friends and even themselves in the mirror or photographs. Besides, the sufferers tend to label and describe others not by their facial features, but by other distinctive features such as voices, clothing and postures. As for children, it is said that they will be extremely clingy and become anxious when their parents leave them. It is because; the children with prosopagnosia could not reliably recognize their parents if they are separated. They also need longer time to mingle and be able to recognize their playmates. Moreover, they will become annoyed and angry if their mothers change their appearance; such

In this essay descriptions as well as identifications of research evidence for both Bruce and Young’s 1986 cognitive model of face recognition and Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s 1990 cognitive model of face recognition; which are then applied to two separate case studies and an explanation of which better suits each shall be given. For the purposes of this essay, Bruce and Young’s 1986 model shall be theory 1, and Burton, Bruce and Johnston’s 1990 model, shall be theory 2.