On 12/4/19 15:46, Amos Nomore wrote:
On 2019-11-29 09:24:37 +0000, Ed Chapin said:
On 10/5/19 9:53 PM, Band Beyond You wrote:
Ed Chapin <edchapin01@hotmail.com> wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GfYV3db0aM
Ed
Thumbs up, Ed! How ya doin’?
As RMGD has come to be populated largely by trolls, antagonists, and a
variety of generally unpleasant cyberstalking federales, I don't tend
to hang here. I was solely stopping by to pay musical respects to RH,
but since you asked . . .
A couple of months ago, I took my mother to the hospital for a routine
checkup and she took a tumble near the front door (she's had
ambulatory issues for years). As I approached to help her up, I
noticed a nearby woman about my age with a rather smarmy, smirky look
on her face, which seemed odd given what had just transpired in front
of her.
She was standing with another woman, who appeared old enough to be her
mother, so my first thought was that maybe she had undergone a similar
experience and could commiserate. My second thought was "Do I know
this person?," as I then considered that her expression appeared to
indicate familiarity with me.
I took a good look at her face, scanned her hair and body, and my
thoughts proceeded thusly:
"Oh, that's C." (C is somebody I worked with years ago, who lives in
that town, and who has always treated me with a bit of disdain.)
"No, that's not C. That's C's daughter." (C's daughter has the same
blond hair and general build.)
"No, that's not C's daughter. C's daughter is too young. That's E.
(E is a medical professional who works near that complex and who has
also treated me with a bit of reservation.)
"No, that's not E. E is taller with darker hair. That's Dr. S."
(Doctor S. works near that complex and has the same general
height/hair color.)
This woman then spoke to me, indicating that my mother fell
gracefully, and my mother reaffirmed that she wasn't badly hurt. I
decided at that point it was Dr. S., and continued to assist my
mother. After getting my mother to her feet, with the help of a male
bystander, this woman walked off and spoke again, reaffirming that her
fall had been a graceful one. At that point, I decided . . .
"No, that's not Dr. S. That's V." (This was quite disconcerting to
me, as V is somebody I already wrote to once (incorrectly) trying to
track down another woman in another incident of uncertain identity.
As she walked off, I was trying to decide whether or not to use that
name. I decided against it (right call), and she walked off while my
head spun. I pondered the voice over the next few days and knew it
sounded familiar from somewhere, and then, several days later . . .
"Oh! That was B." (B is someone I talked with a lot in a class I took
years ago, and over the telephone a few times. She also used the word
"gracefully" in our conversations more that once and lives a few miles
from hospital, or did 25 years ago.)
So now, B thinks I either recognized her and didn't really acknowledge
her or didn't recognize her at all. Such is my life.
It wouldn't be bit deal if it was a one-off, but I have played out
scenarios like this dozens/hundreds of times throughout life, going
back to elementary school. A few years ago, some short dark-haired
woman got so mad I didn't recognize her that she threatened to smack
me with a baseball bat. I tried to figure out, tease out, who she
was, so that I could apologize. Ultimately, I ended up writing to the
wrong woman 4 times, and calling several others trying to resolve it.
One of the people I called to apologize to was an ex-student, one for
whom I wrote a grad school recommendation, and who now works as a
teacher in the same small town I live in. Trust me, this woman was a
bit freaked out to have me call her 15 years later out of the blue.
"IT WASN'T ME," she said. I always look at the bright side, though,
as it gave me an opportunity to congratulate her on her achievements.
The upshot is this: I'm prosopagnosic--one of the 2% of the
population that doesn't recognize people via a facial processing unit
in the right fusiform gyrus fold part of the brain. I recognize
people via a mix of face, location, body shape, hair, posture, gait,
and voice. Unless I am currently interacting with you on a regular
basis, the face often needs additional context to incite recognition.
This condition has only been documented to be as prevalent as it is in
the last few years, and it is blowing quite a few minds. 98% of the
population will likely never understand, because they've never been in
that particular cave, but there ya go . . .
As somebody trained in the social sciences, I get a bit of an extra
chuckle out of it, as this condition certainly has the potential to
present a challenge to some social constructionist models of human
behavior :-)
To any good folks left here, carry on.
It's interesting how much variation exists in how individuals perceive reality.
I have difficulty visualizing things in my "mind's eye", a condition
known as aphantasia which occurs in a small percentage of the general population. I had always assumed that people use their visual
imagination similarly to my own but became suspicious that I was
different than most after being guided into hypnosis via closed-eye
visual imagery, which I couldn't really grasp. I asked around amongst friends and learned that some of them could actually conjure up
closed-eye (and sometimes even open-eye) photographic mental images at
will and that most of the others had some capacity to "see" mental
images without much effort. I just see black but am not an extreme case
in that I don't have to rely on non-sensory or linguistic memory to
describe an object or scenario in my imagination like some people with complete aphantasia need to do.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-minds-eye-is-blind1/
I dream vividly and in color and have had very detailed and intense closed-eye visuals on psychedelics. I'm extremely observant and
sensitive to sensory input most of the time and have no difficulty
planning and imagining outcomes, etc., but I simply cannot (or am barely
able to) "see" these things in my mind's eye.
I kind of wish I'd never heard about this phenomenon because I feel
that, to some degree, I'm missing out on an aspect of living that the majority of people take for granted. Though I don't have prosopagnosia,
I empathize with you and your ability to cope with and adapt to this
peculiar mode of experiencing the world around and within you.
Be well and let us know how you're doing when you feel like it.
Thank you, especially coming from one who has personally sensed how
potentially wide the spectrum of interpretive experience may actually be.
Take some solace if your mind's ear works, as being able to listen to
favorite passages at will is quite handy at times.
Many days, the prosopagnosia doesn't bother me at all. A quick review
of the literature will reveal that many prosopagnosics are very good at
reading other contextual clues surrounding the face. As long as you see
people in expected situations, it is quite likely that you will
recognize them based largely on other than facial cues--and sometimes
even on facial clues if there is a distinctive feature (mole, crooked
nose, etc.).
This type of recognition, however occurs using different parts of the
brain than the super hi-def facial processing center used by the 98% of
the population with normal facial recognition skills. And it is not an all-or-nothing thing, either, as some people appear to have greater
recognition deficits than others. I tend to be an optimist, and for the record, I think I recognize most people most of the time.
But, I also fail to recognize them at a higher rate than normal.
~~~~~
A certain part of the brain “allows most people to recognize faces in
more detail than they do similarly complex inanimate objects. For those
with prosopagnosia, the method for recognizing faces depends on the less sensitive object-recognition system.”
“Prosopagnosics often learn to use "piecemeal" or "feature-by-feature" recognition strategies. This may involve secondary clues such as
clothing, gait, hair color, skin color, body shape, and voice.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
~~~~~
“People with developmental prosopagnosia appear to make up the low end
of the distribution of face recognition abilities.”
These people “have never recognized faces normally so their impairment
is often not readily apparent to them. As a result, many developmental prosopagnosics are unaware of their prosopagnosia even as adults.”
https://www.faceblind.org/research
~~~~~
An interesting sideshoot of learning about prosopagnosia is learning
that many people, even the so-called “liberal” ones tend to distrust the science here. Some version of “You recognized me, so you can’t really
have it” may rear its head in some Mickey Mouse detectivistic “I gotcha” kind of moment.
That simply tells me they haven’t grasped the difference between object recognition and facial recognition. And it is certainly not politically convenient for many contemporary liberals to acknowledge that a certain percentage of the population is genetically predisposed to using body
features for identification purposes.
This is not a blanket condemnation of liberalism, BTW, but the
liberalism that initially attracted me back in the 1960s and 1970s
appeared to be much more open minded, and not merely dogma of a
different stripe.
Truly, I recognize people I haven't seen in years if conditions are
right. For example, I recognized an old friend at a grocery store in
Dover after not having seen her for 15 years, in the neighborhood I know
her from, from a passing side/rear view, based largely on her hair style
and eyeglasses, clothing style, and overall height and body shape--which
hadn't changed much in 15 years. That was just a few months into the
COVID thing, and she was wearing a paranoid person's face mask, from
below her chin right up to the base of her eyes.
I recognized another woman I hadn’t seen for 10 years in the same
grocery store, and she lives 40 miles away, but I also know she travels
this way periodically. She is also very tall with long, frizzy red
hair. Duh!
I recognized a professor from UNH walking down the street in Portsmouth,
from 25 feet away, based largely on her hair, gait, posture, and clothing.
I recognized another professor from UNH in a Walmart near her house,
from down the aisle 40 feet away, based largely on location, height, and
hair.
In short, I tend to recognize people more successfully when I see their
whole body, especially in motion, or in a specific familiar context.
This method of identification, however, is slower, nowhere near as
accurate, and is much more likely to fail in passing close-up
situations. It is the difference between object based recognition, and specific facial based recognition activated in a specific part of the
brain. The latter is faster and more accurate.
Out of context, for example, I walked right by an ex-neighbor loading
his van outside of a shop in York. Walked right by him, looked right at
his face from 2-3 feet away, and the bulb didn’t come on. About 10 feet
past him, he said in a tone of disbelief, “Hey, Ed!” I turned and
looked, probably looking dumbfounded, but still not recognizing him,
until he finally said, “It’s *****.”
Another day, I had a 2 minute conversation with a customer (a different ex-neighbor) at the L-shaped counter at a store in Biddeford, him on one
side, me on the other. I finished my purchase and started to walk out
of the store, and he said “See you later, Ed” when I passed by him. I
was so startled that he knew my name, I literally jumped, which startled
him, “What the hell are you jumping for?”
And don’t even get me started on how many times I have confused one
person for another. I can’t (or won’t) begin to explain the numerous
dicey situations this has caused, but on a fairly benign level . . .
A few months ago, I started a conversation with a regular delivery
person while was walking toward the vehicle, and was 3-4 sentences into
an ongoing dialogue when I realized this person looked quite puzzled.
In fact, it was not the same delivery person at all. In fact, it wasn't
even a woman, but a man of the same general build and hair color, who
had his hair pulled backed in a similar style ponytail. Oops!
And for every incident I have ever told anybody about, there are
probably 100 more I haven’t. In hindsight, it has likely been the root
of many of my social quirks over the years. I can trace it back to
about 1971.
A few years ago, I think I responded to somebody I once knew fairly well
(saw Pat Metheny with, in the old City Hall Auditorium in Portland) in
an unfamiliar place and didn't recognize him to give him a real friend's greeting. I spoke to him more politely, like he was a total stranger.
I didn't figure this out until several days later. This person died of natural causes shortly thereafter, and I never got to explain or
apologize. This one has been a festering oops for years, but I take
some solace in knowing this guy was so easy going that he likely
understood on some level that I was not being maliciously unfriendly.
But, still . . .
Sorry it took so long to respond, but engaging this newsgroup has become
so generally unpleasant in recent years that I actually have to force
myself to do it.
Be well!
Ed
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