Category / Psychology

Bournemouth University research into prosopagnosia (face blindness)

Prosopagnosia – or ‘face blindness’ – is a little known condition affecting 1 in 50 people. As Bournemouth University psychology lecturer Dr Sarah Bate explains, it is ‘literally a loss of memory for faces’.

Speaking to BBC Inside Out’s Jon Cuthill, Dr Bate said: “Prosopagnosia sufferers know what a face is. They know the basic configuration of a face, but they absolutely fail to indentify individuals, no matter how close those people are to them.”

Dr Bate and her team at Bournemouth University have developed a brand new test to identify how good people are at face recognition. It works by processing patterns in eye movement whilst looking at a face.

The findings show that in control trials, participants scan the face in a triangular pattern, looking at the eyes, nose and mouth. In contrast, prosopagnosia sufferers compensate for their lack of recognition by looking at external features of the face, such as the ears and hair.

You can find out more about BournemouthUniversity’s research into the condition by watching Dr Bate’s recent interview on BBC Inside Out. The feature is 11 minutes in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0160zzv/Inside_Out_South_17_10_2011/

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

 

Dr Sarah Bate’s research will feature on BBC One tonight!

A couple of months ago we ran a blog post about the amazing research into prosopagnosia (face blindness) being undertaken at Bournemouth University by Dr Sarah Bate (‘Find out about Dr Sarah Bate’s research into prosopagnosia‘).

Sarah will feature on tonight’s Inside Out – South show, at 7:30pm, discussing the condition with presenter Jon Cuthill and people diagnosed with prosopagnosia.

You can see a quick peek at Sarah’s research on tonight’s show here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15290378

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org.

Find out about Dr Sarah Bate’s research into prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, refers to a severe deficit in recognizing familiar people from their face. The condition affects people in different ways with some experiencing difficulties in the recognition of faces and others experiencing problems recognising other things, such as objects, cars, or animals, as well as faces. Many of those people diagnosed with prosopagnosia report difficulties in other aspects of face processing, such as judging age or gender, and the majority report navigational difficulties. Dr Sarah Bate is a neuropsychologist working in BU’s Psychology Research Group and has been researching the condition for a number of years.

The condition might be more common than previously thought with one study suggesting that as many as 2.5% of the population might have developmental prosopagnosia.

Working with Dr Brad Duchaine (Dartmouth College), Sarah is developing and testing some intervention programmes that might improve face processing in prosopagnosia. Sarah has set up a website (www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org) to raise awareness of prosopagnia and to recruit candidates for her research. Sarah has devised an online test of face recognition ability which can be taken via the website. I took the test last night and highly recommend that others have a go. To date almost 4,000 people worldwide have taken the test. At the end of the test you will be given the option to register your details to visit Sarah at BU for a more formal assessment. During formal assessments Sarah makes use of BU’s eye-tracking technology to assess how prosopagnosics visually read faces.

Sarah is also interested in whether face blindness is hereditary and physiological rather than psychological. She is colaborating with genetics researchers to test families of prosopagnosics and examine any links. The research is ongoing, but initial findings suggest prosopagnia is hereditry, but not always. Sarah’s research aims to identify the sub-types and various causes of prosopagnia, and to improve public understanding of the condition, as well as increasing the early diagnosis of the condition in children.

The Psychology Research Group are always looking for volunteers to take part in their research (example projects include navigation and ageing, children’s language and literature development, and poor sleep in school children). To find out more, visit the psychology volunteers section on the Group’s website.

Sarah’s research has recently been featured in the Guardian. You can read the full story here: Researchers explore problems of ‘face blindness’

You can test yourself for prosopagnosia at Sarah’s website: www.prosopagnosiaresearch.org