Face Blindness Community Group
Face blindness is a rare disability that effects the quality of life for the sufferers. People who are face blind do not have the ability to distiguish differences in peoples faces. It helps to understand by considering color blind people. Color blind people DO see color. But they have trouble distinguishing between colors. Similarly, Face blind people will have trouble...
I've noticed that at times when I've been under a lot of stress I have more problems.
I used to be a teacher and had lots of problems remembering student names b/c I had so much trouble remembering their faces. I started a new job once where the middle school classes I taught were out of control b/c two teachers had quit and the sub wasn't even trying to keep control. I had 198 students, and during the last week of school a student walked up to me as starting asking a question. I remember thinking as she approached, I hope this isn't one of my students, b/c I don't remember ever seeing her in my life before. After 6 months of 5 day a week contact, I usually can at least recognize some one as a person I should know, even if I can't remember their name.
I used to be a teacher and had lots of problems remembering student names b/c I had so much trouble remembering their faces. I started a new job once where the middle school classes I taught were out of control b/c two teachers had quit and the sub wasn't even trying to keep control. I had 198 students, and during the last week of school a student walked up to me as starting asking a question. I remember thinking as she approached, I hope this isn't one of my students, b/c I don't remember ever seeing her in my life before. After 6 months of 5 day a week contact, I usually can at least recognize some one as a person I should know, even if I can't remember their name.
On this subject, I must admit that I am nearly always in high stress mode (unless I am home reading a book or doing some activity that relaxes me). I have issues with all social situations and am not comfortable with groups of people. So I would have a hard time testing to see if I would make fewer mistakes if I were not so stressed.
Your situation does certainly sound like something that could happen to me. I think sometimes, we just will never know why we had a harder time remembering or recognizing a certain individual. It does make it harder to feel comfortable, as we will always be nervous that it will happen again. But, you had so many student to remember. Even a typical (non face blind) person will have issues with remembering all of the students.
Something about the face blind test. I've never suffered from test anxiety, so to me taking the test was not stressful at all, especially knowing your opinion about it.
I was so indifferent to the outcome, as far as concern over their diagnosis, that when I had no idea which face to choose on about half of the choices, I just clicked 1 over and over again, expect where I was pretty sure it wasn't 1, then I guessed 2 most of the time.
To me it was too easy to score well on the test, even if you didn't recognize any faces.