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Face Recognition: Impairments In Prosopagnosia

Face Recognition: Impairments in Prosopagnosia

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 using voice, gait, clothing, hairstyle, and other information rather than faces. Not surprisingly, prosopagnosia can be socially crippling. In absence of these non-facial cues failures of recognizing familiar faces reveal; in fact, patients are unable to recognize famous people, close friends, family members, and even their images in the mirror.

Bodamer, a German neurologist, coined the term prosopagnosia in 1947 (Ellis & Florence, 1990). The word prosopagnosia is a combination of Greek word for face (prosopon) and the medical term for recognition impairment (agnosia). Bodamer also stated prosopagnosia was related to brain injury (head trauma, stroke, and degenerative disease), which refers to acquired prosopagnosia. People with acquired prosopagnosia had normal face recognition ability and then that was impaired. In contrast, prosopagnosia can occur from birth with no medical record of brain damage, which refers to pure developmental or congenital prosopagnosia.

Prosopagnosia is classified as face recognition impairment and differentiated from other types of impairments that can compromise face recognition (Young, 1992). People with prosopagnosia can achieve recognition using non-facial cues. In contrast, Young (1992)...