Actually I think there's a reason for this. I took a cognitive science class once where our professor said that many believe that the portion of the brain responsible for recognizing faces is separate from the portion that does all other visual recognition. Perhaps that's why people have a hard time remembering what a face looks like. It's also why some people can lose their ability to recognize faces but can still recognize all other objects.

Could that also be why untrained artists are better at drawing faces if they view and draw them upside down?

In "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" the upside down drawing exercise is suggested and i think the reasoning is that people draw facial features as "symbols", resorting to their own idea of what a nose looks like / how to draw a nose rather than drawing what they see. Drawing upside down stops this. Maybe this is related.

there's a strange phenomenon that occurs in some pregnancies where extra bloodflow/pressure on a particular region of the brain causes women to over-identify faces (in electrical sockets, in crumpled laundry, etc.). other visual skills are unaffected.

Interesting. Do you have a link to more information?

I don't know about pregnancies, but pareidolia and apophenia are terms in psychology for false positive pattern recognition.

Have you tried the "Famous Faces" test?

http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/ff/ff_intro.php

There's lots more information about Face Blindness (prosopagnosia) on the http://faceblind.org site.

I do seem to have the same problem that he does, but I've passed that test without a hitch. Once I actually see a person I can recognise it, but actually picturing it in my mind is extremely difficult.

Same deal, although my visualization ability is weaker than most in general I think, faces are definitely the hardest.

For me the feeling is very similar to having a word just on the "tip of your tongue", where you know the word you want, you can feel it, its meaning, etc. You know you'd recognize it instantly if you heard (saw) it, but you can't quite bring it up.

Sometimes I can't even tell if I actually am visualizing a face or not, because it's like for a split second I feel like I can almost see it, but then when I focus on it, it's gone. And other times I know I have seen people's faces in my mind, but it's generally spontaneous, not when I actively try to pull one up. Kind of like seeing something in your peripheral vision, but not being able to focus on it.

No, I'm the same. I can recall a particular picture I've seen of someone's face, but I find it difficult to imagine someone's face without that cue.

Ah, it's funny because your comment made me very clearly imagine Angelina Jolie's face out of the blue. Some famous people are easier to visualize than others (two examples I just experimented: Albert Einstein is easy to picture, while my brain can't decide on Sarah Palin's features). I had to work hard to find the Sarah Palin example: it's been surprisingly easy to imagine celebrities.

Picturing people close to me is way harder. Maybe because I picture the famous people more as "objects" in my brain? Maybe I'm used to see them in still pictures and thus it's easier for me to recall that picture as a cue? Maybe I have so many stimuli associated to people closer to me that my brain can't decide on which one to cue from?

Qualia are so intriguing.

I find it much easier to recall a particular picture of someone's face than their face "in general."

I am the same with faces, but I have the same problem with everything I imagine. It's as though I can imagine things, but only in the same way you can look at a photo for 1/5th of a second. You get the general concept but no details.

I doubt I am special in this regard, but perhaps just on the lower end of the spectrum for normal. I cannot draw to save my life because I can't usefully imagine it in my head before it goes on paper.

I don't have a problem picturing faces, but it's not something I do by default. If you consider imagining something as setting up a camera shot on a scene, I usually find that faces are out of frame or in the background. Actually imagine the face is a more conscious action.

Try this:

Imagine an image split vertically down the middle. The left side of the image is solid black. The right side is the right half of your mom's face.

Does that make it easier? It does for me.

How did you stumble upon that trick?! That's amazing!

> Imagine an image

Lost me there :(

If I think hard I can almost see the face of someone but it's fuzzy and just out of my reach. Then for the briefest moment it's sharp, then disappears completely.

Helped me! I can now clearly see the wrinkles in my mom's face (sorry mom!). Do you have any other similar methods for visualizing other stuff?

I can definitely relate! Faces and text just blur and morph in strange ways but all other characteristics are fine. I've always assumed (like Blake in the article) this was normal!

It's not uncommon, I don't think. A lot of people have trouble with faces (in various ways, and to various extents) despite having otherwise "normal" visual processing and memory.

60 mins did an episode on face blindness, and apparently the psychologist Oliver Sacks couldn't even recognize himself in the mirror.

I have poor recall for faces but I am able to recall voices with surprising clarity.