prosopagnosia

[Johnny Angel]

Prosopagnosia (sometimes known as face blindness) is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact... Few successful therapies have so far been developed for affected people, although individuals often learn to use 'piecemeal' or 'feature by feature' recognition strategies. This may involve secondary clues such as clothing, hair color, body shape, and voice. Because the face seems to function as an important identifying feature in memory, it can also be difficult for people with this condition to keep track of information about people, and socialize normally with others.


What would be a good way to model prosopagnosia as GURPS disadvantage?

The easiest way would seem to be to treat it as a less severe version of Blindness, but there seems to be a little more involved than that.

[Stone Dog]

It might be a kind of non-iconographic, but socially focused.

[David Johnston2]

-1 Odious Personal Habit: Saying "Do I know you?"

[Bruno]

Despite the word "Blindness" in the title, I wouldn't call it a less severe form of blindness. You have no problem seeing people, you just can't recognize them by their faces (prosopagnosia makes you very easily confused by changes in clothing and hairstyle, some of the "emergency cues" used to aid recognition).

Blindness prevents Vision rolls, means people using Stealth against you never have to worry about you seeing them, and gives you huge combat penalties.

prosopagnosics are perfectly capable of spotting things, using ranged or melee weapons, driving, etc. But they can't pick their wife out of a crowd unless she's wearing something distinctive...

It's largely a social penalty, as people will assume you either ARE severely visually handicapped, or an idiot, or are deliberately being rude when you don't recognize them and walk by them in the street. It's moderately obnoxious living with a mild case like mine, but I'm a bit of a social isolate anyways and don't run into lots of people who don't know about my problem.

I've also got used to "total strangers" walking up to me and talking to me like they know who I am. The fact that I've got enormous glasses usually helps the "oh sorry, didn't see you there" moments too.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

I don't know whether I have full-blown prosopagnosia, but at least a mild degree of it is (EDIT: seemingly, not diagnosed or anything) part of my Asperger's ensemble. As Bruno said, it has nothing to do with blindness or vision sense roll penalties, just with recognizing people by their faces.

It seems to me almost like a very limited sort of "Non-Discriminatory Vision" thing: like a dog that can't recognize other dogs by their scents and thus has a less-than-discrimintory sense of smell. In my case it also means that I can get overwhelmed by trying to focus on somebody's facial expression since I can't process those too well, and consequently many of the social cues from peoples' expressions are lost on me or misinterpreted.

Perhaps just say the character has to make an IQ roll to recognize people's faces, or assess a penalty (-1 per level of the disad?) to vision comprehension rolls to recognize faces or facial expressions. OPH: "Do I know you?"/"Sorry, I don't recognize you." might be a good way of thinking about it, but at least for me it doesn't seem to be a big source of reduced reactions. I usually preface any comments of that sort by saying "I'm terrible with faces and names, sorry if I don't remember you."

Unless it causes a social reaction penalty, I think -1 or -2 pts per -1 to the vision comprehension roll is plenty.

[Johnny Angel]

I had considered blindness because I briefly considered treating it as though the character was unable to see or recognize faces at all. In this regard, I suppose I considered the idea that a person with severe prosopagnosia would have to rely on other senses (smell; hearing) to recognize people in a manner similar to what some blind people do. It's interesting and very helpful to hear from people who have the condition. I was watching an episode of the Colbert Report earlier which featured a guest with the condition, and that's what made me contemplate the idea.

The guest on the show (his name escapes memory at the moment) suffered from prospagnosia to the extent that someone's face would look completely different to them even if they just slightly turned their head for a moment. The guest was also a famous accomplished artist and painter who drew faces and portraits. When Colbert asked how he could do that, the guest explained that -for some reason- he can see faces fine if they are 'mapped' onto a 2-Dimensional surface. His method of painting was also described as being similar to how some printers work; he makes several 'passes' over an area; each time filling in more and more of the color information that he can see until it eventually looks the way it does to everyone else.

[Captain-Captain]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

Prosopagnosia (sometimes known as face blindness) is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact... Few successful therapies have so far been developed for affected people, although individuals often learn to use 'piecemeal' or 'feature by feature' recognition strategies. This may involve secondary clues such as clothing, hair color, body shape, and voice. Because the face seems to function as an important identifying feature in memory, it can also be difficult for people with this condition to keep track of information about people, and socialize normally with others.


What would be a good way to model prosopagnosia as GURPS disadvantage?

The easiest way would seem to be to treat it as a less severe version of Blindness, but there seems to be a little more involved than that.

Gesundeit!!! ;)

[Flyndaran]

I used to be horrible with faces and especially with expressions. Fortunately, time and practice has helped. Now I'm just poor rather than nearly blind to them.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

The guest on the show (his name escapes memory at the moment) suffered from prospagnosia to the extent that someone's face would look completely different to them even if they just slightly turned their head for a moment.

Yikes, that sounds significantly more severe than the mechanics I suggested could probably model, even with high vision comprehension penalties.

[Bruno]

Interesting side effect of at least some forms prosopagnosia - unable to perform Pareidolia in situations where most people can.

I understand the theory of why the fronts of cars are supposed to look like faces - two round features and strong horizontal lines combined with a generally blocky look and symetry certainly seems to trigger it in most people. I don't really see it though - so when people talk about angry looking cars or happy looking cars I'm completely lost.

I can't "see things" in clouds or fractal noise either. I've never had problems with the concept - it always "made sense" to me as an idea, but I just can't do it, even if I try hard. As a kid, I thought for the longest time that "real people" couldn't actually do it, that it was a cartoon convention.

But I can follow highly iconified representational art (stick figures, smileys, etc etc) and periodically I can "see faces" in other random patterns (Water stains etc).