Do I Know you? The Connection Between autism and facial blindness.

Ashley Petersen Author

04/05/2020 Added

143 Plays

Description

2020 ASD State Conference Breakout Session

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.960]And it looks like it's going,
[00:00:02.120]so thank you guys for being here.
[00:00:05.340]All right, hi everybody.
[00:00:06.810]I am Ashley Peterson and this session
[00:00:09.040]is called, Do I know you?
[00:00:11.360]The connection between autism and prosopagnosia,
[00:00:14.540]or you might also hear prosopagnosia.
[00:00:17.000]I'm gonna get my PowerPoint started here.
[00:00:24.510]Okay, so just a little bit about myself.
[00:00:28.370]I work for Lincoln Public Schools.
[00:00:30.960]I've been working in early intervention
[00:00:33.940]as a special education teacher for about 10 years,
[00:00:36.820]and just this year, working at a high school
[00:00:38.730]for students with mental health concerns,
[00:00:41.370]intellectual disabilities, and significant behaviors.
[00:00:45.410]I was diagnosed with prosopagnosia myself
[00:00:47.650]about seven years ago and we'll talk a little bit more
[00:00:50.663]of that in a little bit.
[00:00:56.050]So today, we're gonna talk about the connection
[00:00:57.974]between autism and this facial blindness or prosopagnosia,
[00:01:02.496]learn how people process and recognize faces,
[00:01:06.021]be able to recognize if someone is struggling
[00:01:08.640]with facial recognition,
[00:01:10.325]have some strategies for either at home or in the classroom,
[00:01:13.751]and know where to get some more information about that.
[00:01:17.550]So today, we're gonna start about,
[00:01:18.690]I'm gonna talk about what is prosopagnosia
[00:01:21.616]and go a little more in depth
[00:01:24.130]about the connection between autism and prosopagnosia.
[00:01:27.172]We'll talk a little bit about the brain
[00:01:28.970]and how the brain recognizes faces,
[00:01:30.935]we'll talk about how to get a diagnosis
[00:01:32.692]or a screening for facial recognition difficulties,
[00:01:36.014]we'll talk about what we use other than faces
[00:01:39.020]to be able to recognize people,
[00:01:40.670]and then finally some strategies and accommodations.
[00:01:45.760]Okay, so first of all, I want you to take a look this photo,
[00:01:49.220]give you a few seconds to look at it.
[00:01:51.990]Now, I want you to close your eyes.
[00:01:54.070]What can you picture about the photo that you just saw?
[00:01:57.260]Try to think about the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the hair.
[00:02:02.890]Okay, so open your eyes again.
[00:02:04.494]Now if you haven't figured it out
[00:02:06.568]with my video cam, that is me.
[00:02:12.060]So this is just a little exercise
[00:02:13.585]to see how you do at recognizing faces.
[00:02:16.750]Are you able to remember the face
[00:02:18.220]that you just looked at when you close your eyes?
[00:02:20.102]Someone with facial blindness difficulties
[00:02:22.270]when they close their eyes after looking at someone
[00:02:24.750]or looking at a photo, a lot of times,
[00:02:26.680]they can't form that mental picture
[00:02:28.359]of what someone looks like.
[00:02:32.490]Oh, and then before I get much into it,
[00:02:34.566]I was going to ask you guys if you could use the chat box
[00:02:38.270]and let me know what your role is
[00:02:40.450]working with individuals with autism,
[00:02:42.130]whether you have autism yourself,
[00:02:43.113]you're a parent, you're a special education teacher,
[00:02:47.320]if you could just type that into the chat box,
[00:02:49.430]I'd like to see who I'm talking to.
[00:03:09.700]All right, looks like we got a lot
[00:03:10.920]of early childhood special education teachers,
[00:03:12.912]special education teachers, some BCBAs, some parents
[00:03:20.460]lots of SLPs and psychologists.
[00:03:23.256]Thank you, guys.
[00:03:30.208]Okay, so what is prosopagnosia?
[00:03:32.910]A prosopagnosia is also known
[00:03:34.930]as facial blindness or face blindness,
[00:03:36.832]and so which is a whole lot easier
[00:03:39.816]to pronounce than prosopagnosia.
[00:03:41.940]So a lot of people just call it face blindness.
[00:03:45.230]But it's a neurological condition,
[00:03:46.568]something that occurs in the brain
[00:03:48.040]that is gonna affect someone's ability
[00:03:50.130]to be able to recognize familiar people,
[00:03:52.000]whether it's friends, family members, well-known people.
[00:03:56.490]And there's two different kinds,
[00:03:57.794]there's acquired prosopagnosia.
[00:03:59.582]This is something that occurs
[00:04:02.315]due to usually a head injury or a stroke.
[00:04:05.960]And often, they found that it's due to a brain injury
[00:04:10.890]in the right side, lower part of the brain.
[00:04:15.560]And then there's developmental prosopagnosia.
[00:04:18.220]This is facial recognition difficulties
[00:04:20.670]that you've had from birth.
[00:04:23.382]And they suspect that this affects one in 50 people.
[00:04:28.480]So think about your classrooms, think about your caseload,
[00:04:31.910]think about your community,
[00:04:34.650]other groups that you participate in,
[00:04:36.590]one in 50 people struggle with facial recognition,
[00:04:39.504]and yet, very few people have heard of this condition.
[00:04:44.390]Myself, I didn't realize that I had facial blindness
[00:04:49.310]until after college.
[00:04:50.889]I started realizing in college
[00:04:52.481]that something was a little bit different.
[00:04:54.860]I went to a small, a fairly small college
[00:04:58.117]and I would walk across campus
[00:05:00.540]and people would run up to me and say hello,
[00:05:03.199]passing on the campus.
[00:05:05.990]I'd be walking with my roommates
[00:05:07.013]and people would come up and they'd be like,
[00:05:09.567]"Hey, Ashley, how are you?"
[00:05:10.710]And I'll look at my roommates, I'm like,
[00:05:12.497]"I have no idea who these people are."
[00:05:15.033]So my roommates started helping me out
[00:05:17.160]by telling me who the people were that I kept running into.
[00:05:23.120]And then finally, after college, I saw a 60 Minutes special
[00:05:27.750]and later we're gonna watch a little clips from this
[00:05:29.757]and discovered facial blindness and prosopagnosia.
[00:05:33.750]I'm like, "That is me.
[00:05:34.947]"This is what I've been struggling with my entire life."
[00:05:38.410]And looking back on my childhood,
[00:05:39.750]I can see a little clues here and there,
[00:05:41.735]where I wasn't recognizing faces as well as other people.
[00:05:46.930]The one in 50 people comes from,
[00:05:48.638]started with a study done in Germany
[00:05:51.710]where they took a whole bunch of people
[00:05:54.357]and tested their facial recognition abilities
[00:05:57.321]and this study has been duplicated elsewhere.
[00:06:02.015]And I like to think of it, it's a common disorder
[00:06:06.170]but very much unrecognized.
[00:06:08.208]If you think of dyslexia,
[00:06:10.320]when dyslexia was first discovered in the school system,
[00:06:14.000]it's a fairly common condition,
[00:06:15.930]but for a long time it went unrecognized and undiagnosed.
[00:06:21.180]They also believe that prosopagnosia is autosomal dominant.
[00:06:25.510]So if you have facial blindness
[00:06:27.760]or somebody in your family has facial blindness,
[00:06:29.465]it's very common for others in your family
[00:06:31.430]to have it as well.
[00:06:34.840]Okay, so hopefully this video will work.
[00:06:37.470]This is just a short clip.
[00:06:38.700]This is the 60 Minutes episode that I watched
[00:06:42.210]that taught me a little bit about facial blindness.
[00:06:51.440]Okay, when you did the share,
[00:06:53.070]there's a little button that you have
[00:06:54.970]to do that says for audio.
[00:06:57.710]So just pause again, go back into your share.
[00:07:00.030]We might have to disable for a second your share
[00:07:02.390]so you can see that button again.
[00:07:06.770]Oh, share computer sound.
[00:07:09.430]Okay, let's try this again.
[00:07:13.782]Most of us take for granted
[00:07:15.016]that we can instantly recognize people we know
[00:07:18.356]by looking at their faces.
[00:07:20.264]It's so automatic, it almost sounds silly to even say it.
[00:07:23.876]Friends can put on a hat, cut their hair,
[00:07:26.811]and still we know them by their face.
[00:07:29.769]We can do this for thousands upon thousands of faces
[00:07:32.949]without ever giving it a moment's thought.
[00:07:35.842]But imagine for a second what life would be like
[00:07:38.242]if you couldn't, if your wife or husband
[00:07:41.091]looked like a stranger, you couldn't tell your kids apart,
[00:07:45.348]couldn't recognize yourself in a mirror.
[00:07:48.521]Well, that's what life is like for people
[00:07:50.780]who suffer from a mysterious condition
[00:07:52.516]called face blindness or prosopagnosia
[00:07:56.880]that can make it nearly impossible
[00:07:58.359]to recognize or identify faces.
[00:08:01.346]If you've never heard of face blindness, you're not alone.
[00:08:04.928]Chances are your doctor hasn't either.
[00:08:08.330]It's been unknown to most of the medical world
[00:08:11.010]until very recently.
[00:08:13.340]Hearing about it can feel a little
[00:08:15.150]like entering the Twilight Zone.
[00:08:17.220]But for people who are face blind,
[00:08:20.010]the condition is very real.
[00:08:25.250]Brad Duchaine is a professor at Dartmouth College
[00:08:27.917]who's been studying face blindness for nearly 15 years.
[00:08:32.060]He says the hardest thing to understand
[00:08:34.001]is how people can see a familiar face,
[00:08:37.640]but not recognize it.
[00:08:40.320]So he created a demonstration to give me a little taste,
[00:08:43.398]faces turned upside down.
[00:08:46.580]So here are some famous faces.
[00:08:48.678]You're gonna be tempted to twist your head but don't do it.
[00:08:51.140]Okay.
[00:08:52.101]Now, can you identify any of these people?
[00:08:54.740]I was completely at a loss.
[00:08:57.435]You think I'd know all of these people?
[00:08:59.970]You've seen them all a lot.
[00:09:02.890]I don't know any of these people, I really don't.
[00:09:06.910]You want to see 'em upright?
[00:09:07.950]Sure.
[00:09:09.690]It was astonishing, with just that click,
[00:09:12.212]they became recognizable people before my eyes.
[00:09:16.380]I know John Travolta, I know Morley,
[00:09:18.930]and there was Denzel Washington, Jennifer Aniston,
[00:09:22.380]Sandra Bullock, but the one that really got me
[00:09:25.290]was the young woman on the lower right, my daughter,
[00:09:29.310]I didn't know my own daughter?
[00:09:30.760]Yeah.
[00:09:31.593]I didn't know my own daughter.
[00:09:33.697]So there she is.
[00:09:35.473]Wow, so is this, am I getting a feeling
[00:09:38.750]for what people with face blindness have?
[00:09:41.750]This is, when you look at that,
[00:09:43.251]there's a face there.
[00:09:44.717]There are parts, their eyes, there's mouth,
[00:09:46.921]but you just can't put it together.
[00:09:48.850]Wow, that's stunning.
[00:09:50.900]I feel terrible for them now.
[00:09:52.990]Yeah, it's really difficult.
[00:09:54.470]And largely unknown.
[00:09:56.450]World-renowned neurologist
[00:09:57.670]and writer, Dr. Oliver Sacks.
[00:09:59.250]We asked Dr. Oliver Sacks,
[00:10:00.654]the famous chronicler of fascinating
[00:10:03.440]and bizarre neurological conditions,
[00:10:05.449]who wrote about face blindness in his latest book,
[00:10:08.707]"The Mind's Eye".
[00:10:09.920]This is with our faces that we face the world.
[00:10:13.140]How do you explain that the medical world
[00:10:15.770]that did not identify this problem?
[00:10:17.930]It is not usually a complaint of people.
[00:10:20.690]People do not bring it up.
[00:10:22.800]Many people who are color blind do not know of that
[00:10:26.110]until they take an army medical.
[00:10:29.150]One sort of assumes that other people are the way one is.
[00:10:33.310]It never ever, ever in my life occurred to me
[00:10:37.100]that people would look at a face and just get it like that.
[00:10:39.820]I believe that I was not good with people.
[00:10:42.140]But, no, I do have the reason, I just thought I was stupid.
[00:10:48.160]All right, so I have a little exercise for you.
[00:10:51.378]I put a face up here.
[00:10:52.937]I'm gonna let you look at it for just a minute,
[00:10:55.890]and then I'm gonna have you try
[00:10:57.020]to find the face in this picture.
[00:10:59.930]Just give you a few more seconds.
[00:11:04.460]All right, in the chat box, if you find the face,
[00:11:08.240]go ahead and maybe just type yes.
[00:11:16.220]Okay, now for those of you who might be struggling,
[00:11:18.360]I'll give you a little clue.
[00:11:22.040]Give you a few more seconds.
[00:11:25.410]And if you're still not sure, there he is right there.
[00:11:29.840]Now we're gonna try this again with this face.
[00:11:35.970]Give you a few seconds to to look at it.
[00:11:40.920]Okay, now when you find the face,
[00:11:44.013]go ahead and type yes in the chat box.
[00:11:50.130]I'm noticing the chat box is much slower
[00:11:53.070]than it was last time.
[00:11:55.970]Some of you have it, some of you no.
[00:11:58.970]Okay, here's a clue.
[00:12:00.200]See if this helps you make it a little bit easier.
[00:12:06.950]Give you a few more seconds.
[00:12:09.820]And the answer is that one right there.
[00:12:14.950]So our brains are wired to see human faces
[00:12:19.320]and with someone with facial recognition difficulties,
[00:12:22.090]it's not that you can't see a face,
[00:12:23.988]it's just that you're not able to recognize it.
[00:12:26.530]Seeing something and recognizing something
[00:12:28.630]are two completely different things.
[00:12:30.912]And that can be hard for people
[00:12:32.440]who automatically recognize faces,
[00:12:35.700]it can be hard for them to understand
[00:12:37.050]how someone can see a face and not recognize it
[00:12:39.920]even though it's a familiar face.
[00:12:44.310]So there's a couple different types of prosopagnosia.
[00:12:46.716]The first one is apperceptive prosopagnosia.
[00:12:49.374]This is where you have deficits in facial processing.
[00:12:54.320]Very severe cases of this, you don't recognize faces at all.
[00:12:57.850]So you can see the picture on the right there,
[00:13:00.300]the little broom man.
[00:13:01.880]Most of us will be able to see
[00:13:03.200]that it's kind of a grumpy face there.
[00:13:05.760]Someone with apperceptive prosopagnosia,
[00:13:08.470]a more severe case would not be able to see a face in this.
[00:13:11.611]Oliver Sacks who was briefly shown in the video
[00:13:15.254]we watched a few minutes ago,
[00:13:17.039]he wrote a book called
[00:13:19.567]"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"
[00:13:21.750]and other clinical tails.
[00:13:23.050]So in this book, there was a man,
[00:13:24.821]he reached out to put on his hat,
[00:13:27.220]tried to grab his hat and grabbed his wife's face instead.
[00:13:30.700]So he didn't even recognize that his wife's face
[00:13:32.750]was in front of him.
[00:13:34.780]There's also associated prosopagnosia or sometimes,
[00:13:38.130]you hear this called prosopamnesia,
[00:13:40.810]and this is deficits in memory and recognition of faces
[00:13:43.938]and specifically that connection
[00:13:45.556]between perceiving a face and memorizing it.
[00:13:48.910]Most studies suggest that facial processing
[00:13:52.270]in individuals with autism is intact,
[00:13:54.375]while it's the deficits and the ability
[00:13:56.439]to recognize and remember faces
[00:13:59.572]and also to recognize emotion.
[00:14:01.920]So individuals with autism will often struggle
[00:14:03.999]with these associative prosopagnosia
[00:14:06.850]and remembering those faces.
[00:14:13.670]Studies have shown that individuals with autism
[00:14:16.085]are gonna have some specific deficits in ability
[00:14:18.813]to memorize faces that discriminate
[00:14:21.823]between eyes and to recognize emotions.
[00:14:25.445]This is very common in an individuals with autism.
[00:14:28.585]The percentages aren't quite clear.
[00:14:30.540]This research is still very new for prosopagnosia.
[00:14:34.472]I've seen some show facial recognition difficulties
[00:14:37.987]in individuals with autism up to 60% or 70%
[00:14:41.130]of individuals with autism who struggle with this.
[00:14:44.010]And they discovered that these deficits
[00:14:45.867]are specific to faces so they ruled out
[00:14:49.350]any difficulties in communication
[00:14:51.880]or in the demands of the task or in other memory tasks.
[00:14:56.020]It's very specific to faces.
[00:14:58.475]There's also a correlation between an individual's ability
[00:15:01.498]to recognize faces and the severity of the autism.
[00:15:04.147]I'm not saying that one causes the other,
[00:15:06.480]but there is a correlation between them.
[00:15:09.350]And autism and prosopagnosia can occur comorbidly
[00:15:13.041]so they can occur together,
[00:15:14.725]or they can often be misdiagnosed as each other.
[00:15:17.870]So someone with autism, diagnosed with autism
[00:15:21.710]might actually have a very severe case
[00:15:23.426]of being able to recognize others,
[00:15:26.073]which causes many difficult social situations.
[00:15:29.930]And someone with prosopagnosia
[00:15:31.500]might actually have autism instead.
[00:15:35.955]I got the chance to meet with Temple Grandin
[00:15:39.330]at a conference a few years ago, we had lunch together.
[00:15:41.935]In the picture here, you can see me on the left,
[00:15:44.369]Temple Grandin on the right,
[00:15:46.047]and for those of you who are not familiar,
[00:15:49.060]Temple Grandin is a famous person with autism.
[00:15:53.670]She's written many different books.
[00:15:55.163]She's a professor at, I think,
[00:15:56.990]it's Colorado State University
[00:15:59.160]and does a lot of presentations.
[00:16:01.760]I got the chance to ask her about prosopagnosia
[00:16:04.230]and that this is something that she struggles with
[00:16:06.224]and she said she does and we got a chance
[00:16:08.914]to talk together about the difficulties
[00:16:10.758]of going to a conference
[00:16:13.254]when you struggle with facial recognition.
[00:16:15.390]One benefit with doing this conference online
[00:16:18.094]is I don't have to worry too much about facial recognition
[00:16:21.355]since everybody's name appears
[00:16:22.783]in the little boxes on the screen.
[00:16:25.722]But here's a little quote from her book,
[00:16:28.037]"Thinking in Pictures."
[00:16:29.410]She says, "I often get into embarrassing situations
[00:16:32.682]"because I do not remember faces
[00:16:34.543]"unless I have seen people many times,
[00:16:36.627]"or they have very distinct facial features
[00:16:39.027]"such as a big beard, thick glasses, or strange hairstyle.
[00:16:42.587]"Barbara Jones, a woman with autism told me
[00:16:45.167]"that to remember a face,
[00:16:46.247]"she has to see the person 15 times."
[00:16:52.030]I wanted to give you guys a few quotes
[00:16:54.286]from individuals with autism and prosopagnosia.
[00:16:57.950]You'll notice in these quotes that prosopagnosia
[00:16:59.784]is often shortened to just proso,
[00:17:03.600]just so you can get an idea of what it's like
[00:17:05.196]to have both prosopagnosia and autism.
[00:17:09.320]So the first one as an adult with proso
[00:17:11.437]and also on the spectrum,
[00:17:13.067]"I'd say that proso just adds to the alienation
[00:17:15.927]"and feeling of not belonging or not having a clue
[00:17:19.387]"of what's going on.
[00:17:21.900]The next person says, "I'm a proso autistic,
[00:17:24.011]"it's a neurodivergency, not a deficit
[00:17:27.167]"because autism and proso are not inherently negative.
[00:17:30.504]"Society just isn't built for us
[00:17:33.137]"and the solution is to change society,
[00:17:35.127]"not neurodivergent folks.
[00:17:37.036]"So don't focus on making someone better
[00:17:40.037]"at recognizing faces, make people around them
[00:17:42.167]"more accepting of differences."
[00:17:44.040]That was by Lindt Schmitz.
[00:17:46.020]And finally, Kate Fox, "As an autistic prosopagnosiac,
[00:17:50.913]" I suppose there's an issue around negotiating
[00:17:52.747]"and navigating the social awkwardness
[00:17:55.217]"of failing to recognize someone.
[00:17:56.618]"It can be excruciating to try
[00:17:59.667]"to get through a conversation with someone
[00:18:01.884]"when I have no idea who they are."
[00:18:05.826]These all come from a Facebook support group
[00:18:08.960]for individuals with prosopagnosia.
[00:18:11.430]And as part of that group, I found out
[00:18:14.290]that there's many individuals
[00:18:15.600]that have both prosopagnosia and autism.
[00:18:19.940]So you have to ask yourself, what comes first?
[00:18:23.150]It's the whole chicken or the egg question.
[00:18:26.070]Does prosopagnosia, can that cause autism?
[00:18:28.740]Can autism cause prosopagnosia?
[00:18:30.320]What's the connection between the two?
[00:18:32.730]Well, we know that individuals with autism
[00:18:34.620]often have poor eye contact or mutual gaze,
[00:18:37.811]they might have differences in gaze patterns
[00:18:39.940]or social interest.
[00:18:41.282]On the right there, you can see a study
[00:18:43.850]where they looked at the gaze patterns
[00:18:45.605]of individuals with autism and a control group.
[00:18:48.880]And you can see the control group,
[00:18:50.210]often has this nice triangle between the eyes and the mouth.
[00:18:53.880]Whereas the autistic group, it's not.
[00:18:57.290]It's more erratic, with the eyes gaze patterns are.
[00:19:00.960]So the research is still trying to figure out if it's this,
[00:19:06.980]the eye gaze and looking at faces,
[00:19:09.371]if that eventually causes prosopagnosia later in life,
[00:19:14.189]there was a study done with infants
[00:19:17.419]with congenital cataracts.
[00:19:19.630]So these are infants that for a period in their life,
[00:19:22.970]they were unable to see.
[00:19:24.645]Later in life, most of these infants
[00:19:27.100]then developed prosopagnosia.
[00:19:28.720]So not being able to see at a critical point in their lives
[00:19:33.048]led to them not being able to recognize faces later in life.
[00:19:36.840]So with autism, is it these children
[00:19:39.622]who maybe aren't looking at faces or making eye contact,
[00:19:42.518]is that causing facial recognition difficulties
[00:19:45.220]later in life?
[00:19:46.053]That part, we're not so sure about yet,
[00:19:48.250]that's still being researched.
[00:19:51.813]Next, I wanna show you another little video.
[00:19:53.477]This is another perspective of someone
[00:19:55.845]with autism and prosopagnosia.
[00:19:58.404]This is by Amethyst Schaber
[00:20:00.653]and she has a video blog called Ask an Autistic.
[00:20:07.031]♪ I wanna write a song to shine a light ♪
[00:20:10.463]♪ Be the change we want some things right ♪
[00:20:13.442]♪ Even waiting in the dark for so long ♪
[00:20:19.110]Hi everyone, I'm Amethyst and welcome to Ask an Autistic.
[00:20:22.670]In today's episode, I'm going to be talking
[00:20:23.928]about a pretty interesting neurological phenomenon
[00:20:27.504]that, while not exclusive to autistic people,
[00:20:31.190]does occur more often in autistic people
[00:20:34.530]than in non-autistic people and that is prosopagnosia.
[00:20:39.090]I have prosopagnosia so a lot of what I'm saying
[00:20:41.715]in this video is gonna be coming from my own experiences.
[00:20:45.200]Lots of people will forget somebody over time
[00:20:48.677]and lots of people might see someone out in public
[00:20:51.358]a stranger that they think is someone else.
[00:20:53.708]And those are normal like mix-ups or misrememberings
[00:20:57.162]but people with face blindness
[00:20:59.317]either I can walk by a family member
[00:21:01.542]and if they had changed their hairstyle and their outfit,
[00:21:04.015]I would not be able to recognize them.
[00:21:06.378]Even Marvin, who I see every day
[00:21:09.320]and spend quite a bit of time with and whom I love dearly,
[00:21:13.660]when I'm looking at him, I could describe his face to you,
[00:21:16.590]I could look at the individual features,
[00:21:18.561]I could describe the shape of his nose
[00:21:20.720]and the color of his eyes and how thick his eyebrows are.
[00:21:23.094]But I can't later recall what he looks like.
[00:21:26.804]And when I remember things,
[00:21:28.221]there aren't really faces in my memories.
[00:21:30.779]Growing up with prosopagnosia, as you can imagine,
[00:21:33.731]can cause quite a few misadventures or mix-ups.
[00:21:37.530]Children with prosopagnosia are gonna be very confused.
[00:21:40.973]If their parents don't know
[00:21:42.570]that that's what's going on with them,
[00:21:43.829]and if the child doesn't know what's going on with them,
[00:21:47.043]people are going to think that the child is rude
[00:21:48.975]or that they're just lazy or that they need
[00:21:52.780]to work harder remembering and putting names to faces
[00:21:55.680]when working harder won't do a thing
[00:21:57.990]because your brain doesn't work in that way.
[00:22:01.250]People with prosopagnosia can be perceived as rude
[00:22:03.823]because there can be a moment of hesitation
[00:22:05.733]if someone says hey to us when we're out
[00:22:08.080]and we don't recognize them,
[00:22:09.063]or there's a moment where we're using secondary
[00:22:12.258]and tertiary clues about a person's appearance
[00:22:15.184]to figure out who they are,
[00:22:16.658]and I found that people actually can get kind of offended
[00:22:19.832]if you don't remember who they are.
[00:22:22.509]I've used all kinds of phrases to try to explain to people
[00:22:27.242]without actually explaining or pulling out
[00:22:29.461]big science-y neurological type words.
[00:22:31.911]Like, "I'm sorry, I'm really bad with faces," or,
[00:22:34.446]"Oh, I just, I didn't see you there,"
[00:22:36.350]or "Oh, I didn't recognize you, your hair is different,"
[00:22:39.941]but people sometimes push
[00:22:42.074]and then it gets awkward to explain.
[00:22:50.930]So our brains are wired to see faces
[00:22:53.250]like I talked a little bit ago,
[00:22:55.530]we tend to see faces in a lot of different things.
[00:22:57.620]So here's a couple examples
[00:22:59.930]of things that people have seen faces in.
[00:23:04.733]I often see faces in cars or in electrical outlets.
[00:23:11.600]And even from birth,
[00:23:12.890]we show signs of this facial recognition.
[00:23:14.970]So from three to four days old,
[00:23:16.619]babies will show signs of facial recognition.
[00:23:19.695]However, this might be very broad shapes
[00:23:24.830]as they found that if they cover up a mother's face
[00:23:27.640]with a scarf or hat, sometimes that makes it difficult
[00:23:31.633]for a baby to recognize that as a person.
[00:23:34.456]By six months old, a baby can start to discriminate
[00:23:38.605]between different human faces
[00:23:40.360]and also between different primate faces.
[00:23:42.960]This is also when they start recognizing their caregiver.
[00:23:46.400]At nine months old, that ability
[00:23:48.551]to recognize different faces
[00:23:51.800]narrows to just being able
[00:23:53.340]to discriminate between human faces,
[00:23:55.940]and babies will tend to look more at pictures
[00:23:58.430]of faces than any other patterns.
[00:24:00.700]And then by age two, a young child
[00:24:02.835]can recognize many different human faces.
[00:24:04.952]But this is limited to what they're exposed to.
[00:24:07.850]So you'll find a child that is maybe not exposed
[00:24:11.910]to a very diverse population,
[00:24:13.824]they might be able to only recognize one cultural group
[00:24:18.050]of faces and have a difficult time discriminating
[00:24:19.988]between faces from other cultures.
[00:24:26.750]I'm not gonna go into too much detail here,
[00:24:29.320]but there's a few areas of the brain
[00:24:31.050]that I wanted to specifically mention
[00:24:33.000]with regards to facial recognition.
[00:24:35.393]The first is a fusiform face area,
[00:24:37.511]that's the blue area on this brain.
[00:24:39.906]And then the occipital face area,
[00:24:42.766]which is the purple area on the brain.
[00:24:45.560]These are areas of the brain that are specifically activated
[00:24:49.770]when looking at up at faces and particularly upright faces.
[00:24:57.370]The brain has different parts of the brain
[00:24:59.183]that react depending on what you're looking at,
[00:25:01.500]so parts of the brain are responsible
[00:25:03.020]for object recognition, color recognition,
[00:25:06.650]facial movements, facial expressions,
[00:25:08.810]and, like I said, faces.
[00:25:14.270]The research, we're still trying to figure out,
[00:25:16.390]for prosopagnosia, exactly what is affected
[00:25:19.740]when someone fails to recognize a face.
[00:25:22.750]The fusiform face area and the occipital face area,
[00:25:25.340]those parts of the brain are less activated
[00:25:27.580]when looking at a face for someone
[00:25:28.910]with facial recognition difficulties.
[00:25:31.270]And they're still trying to figure out
[00:25:32.320]if exactly how we process faces,
[00:25:35.033]if we're processing them as a whole
[00:25:36.975]or if we're processing them as individual pieces.
[00:25:41.330]Some very new research is showing
[00:25:43.550]that we even have some specific cells in our brain
[00:25:46.111]that will light up based on certain geometric patterns
[00:25:50.040]that we see in faces.
[00:25:50.950]So depending on how far the eyes are apart,
[00:25:53.220]and that triangle between the eyes and the mouth,
[00:25:57.110]there are specific parts of the brain
[00:25:57.987]that will react to those.
[00:26:01.483]And here's another view of the brain.
[00:26:03.800]Again, the green areas,
[00:26:04.712]both the dark green and the light green
[00:26:06.400]are are that fusiform face area and the red areas,
[00:26:08.743]the occipital face area.
[00:26:12.820]And you can see here, that individuals
[00:26:15.153]with facial blindness, those face specific areas,
[00:26:19.980]activate less than someone
[00:26:21.500]who is able to recognize faces very well.
[00:26:24.650]But it doesn't affect things like objects,
[00:26:28.430]the ability to recognize objects or other things,
[00:26:30.288]it's very specific to faces.
[00:26:34.200]Okay, here's a little test of our own,
[00:26:37.160]just like in the 60 Minutes video that we just watched.
[00:26:40.040]Try not to turn your face.
[00:26:41.347]I wanna see if you can recognize some of these faces.
[00:26:47.190]In the chat box, why don't you put a number
[00:26:48.880]for how many faces you can recognize?
[00:27:01.200]Okay, now I'm going to turn them over
[00:27:02.530]and I want you to see if it's any easier
[00:27:04.180]to recognize these faces.
[00:27:14.493]So what I'm showing you here is the facial inversion effect.
[00:27:18.841]These pictures when they're upside down,
[00:27:21.070]they still contain all the same information.
[00:27:22.618]You could still see the eyes and the nose and the face
[00:27:25.450]and some of you could still recognize all these faces
[00:27:27.381]even when upside down.
[00:27:29.480]But something happens when we turn 'em right side up.
[00:27:32.480]It's much easier to recognize these faces for most people.
[00:27:36.090]So those parts of the brain that are responsible
[00:27:37.602]for recognizing faces,
[00:27:39.630]it's specifically activated when faces are upright.
[00:27:43.550]And this is very unique to faces, objects,
[00:27:48.243]like my water bottle here,
[00:27:50.750]it doesn't make a difference even if it's upside down
[00:27:52.740]or sideways or right side up,
[00:27:54.100]we can still recognize that just fine.
[00:27:56.330]There's something very specific to faces
[00:27:58.619]that in order for our brains
[00:28:02.148]to be using all those different pieces have to be upright.
[00:28:06.570]Another interesting effect that we see,
[00:28:08.629]I'm gonna show you the Thatcher effect here.
[00:28:11.453]So we have some faces here.
[00:28:13.970]Now watch what happens when I turn 'em upside down.
[00:28:16.020]And I'm going to tell you I did nothing
[00:28:17.410]to change these faces,
[00:28:18.440]I'm just gonna turn 'em upside down.
[00:28:22.020]Did anybody recognize that when they were still upside down?
[00:28:28.940]So you might not have noticed when they were upside down,
[00:28:30.980]but you can see when the right side up,
[00:28:31.957]there's something very different about those faces,
[00:28:35.570]something odd about their eyes
[00:28:37.130]and something about their nose, sorry, about their mouth.
[00:28:42.770]So when the pictures are upside down like this,
[00:28:45.440]we tend to see these individual pieces of the face,
[00:28:48.450]we can see the eyes, we can see the mouth,
[00:28:50.260]but for some reason, we're not able to process
[00:28:52.097]that face as a whole.
[00:28:53.930]When I turn it around, you're able to process
[00:28:55.404]those faces as a whole and all of a sudden,
[00:28:57.700]you can see that there are things
[00:28:59.735]about that upside down faces that we couldn't see
[00:29:01.923]when they were upside down.
[00:29:07.780]Here's another thing that I think can help you understand
[00:29:11.226]why it is that you can see something
[00:29:13.723]but yet not understand it and not process it.
[00:29:16.640]So I want you to look at the sentence
[00:29:17.903]and see if you can figure out what the sentence means.
[00:29:21.990]If you got to figure it out,
[00:29:23.140]go ahead and type yes in the chat box.
[00:29:33.720]Someone's got it figured out, few people.
[00:29:38.130]So for most of you, you can see all the words
[00:29:40.767]but without the punctuation, the sentence has no meaning.
[00:29:44.200]So let me add in some punctuation and I'll read it to you.
[00:29:48.340]That that is, is.
[00:29:50.550]That that is not, is not.
[00:29:53.457]Does the sentence make more sense now?
[00:29:57.290]So for someone with prosopagnosia,
[00:29:59.127]they can see all the features of that face
[00:30:02.010]just like in that sentence, you could see all the words,
[00:30:03.871]but it's like the punctuation is missing in a face,
[00:30:06.560]we're missing something that allows us
[00:30:08.850]to process that face and in the sentence,
[00:30:11.287]without that punctuation, you weren't able to understand it.
[00:30:16.550]So person with prosopagnosia,
[00:30:17.825]it's like looking at a face without any punctuation.
[00:30:23.040]A little history of prosopagnosia
[00:30:24.633]and I'll just go into this briefly.
[00:30:27.470]In 1800s, they started to recognize
[00:30:29.621]that some people would have difficulties recognizing people
[00:30:32.943]that they should recognize maybe a close friend
[00:30:35.313]or a spouse after a stroke.
[00:30:39.143]But it wasn't until 1947 that someone actually came up
[00:30:42.517]with the term prosopagnosia,
[00:30:44.530]which literally means face forgetting.
[00:30:50.657]So, this was discovered in World War II
[00:30:54.270]when soldiers would go acquire a head injury
[00:30:57.754]in World War II, then come home
[00:31:00.040]and be unable to recognize
[00:31:02.030]their spouse or their children.
[00:31:04.150]At the time, other professionals thought this was crazy
[00:31:08.210]that there couldn't be a part of the brain
[00:31:11.195]that only looked at faces.
[00:31:13.473]Why would our brain be specialized to faces?
[00:31:16.560]But in the 1980s, with the development of the CT scan
[00:31:19.956]and MRI technology, they started to identify
[00:31:23.050]those parts of the brain that we talked about already,
[00:31:25.540]like the fusiform face area that were specifically activated
[00:31:28.651]when doing facial recognition tasks.
[00:31:32.070]It wasn't until 1990s that they discovered
[00:31:34.533]that someone could be born with this condition.
[00:31:37.490]And it wasn't until 2014 that prosopagnosia
[00:31:39.904]was added to the list of national health service conditions.
[00:31:43.950]So this is one reason why even though
[00:31:46.030]this is a fairly common condition,
[00:31:47.500]very few people know about it,
[00:31:48.790]and even doctors and neurologists
[00:31:50.804]haven't heard of this condition in many cases
[00:31:53.180]because it is still very new
[00:31:54.800]and the research on this is still very new.
[00:32:00.630]Prosopagnosia is a spectrum disorder.
[00:32:03.490]Someone with very severe prosopagnosia
[00:32:05.700]is not gonna be able to recognize their children,
[00:32:09.000]their wife, their co-workers,
[00:32:11.420]and may never be able to recognize them.
[00:32:14.594]To someone who maybe has inconsistent recognition
[00:32:18.521]or they can recognize close family members and friends
[00:32:21.478]but acquaintances or co-workers, they might struggle with.
[00:32:25.472]For myself, I kind of fall somewhere in the middle.
[00:32:27.750]I can usually recognize family members and close friends,
[00:32:31.659]but every once in a while, even that fails.
[00:32:35.566]So an individual with prosopagnosia,
[00:32:37.513]first of all, they may be unaware
[00:32:40.055]that they have any difficulty recognizing faces.
[00:32:43.350]They may have developed many different coping skills
[00:32:46.260]and not realize that the way they perceive faces
[00:32:50.190]and recognize people as any different
[00:32:51.820]from people around them,
[00:32:53.200]and they can still maybe recognize family members,
[00:32:55.833]teachers or other familiar people,
[00:32:58.050]especially if people are in a familiar context,
[00:33:01.950]and they may have developed many different coping skills
[00:33:04.300]so you might not even see any negative effects
[00:33:06.934]of this facial recognition difficulties.
[00:33:10.460]An interesting story, I mentioned that prosopagnosia
[00:33:14.170]often runs in the family.
[00:33:15.820]Well, after I got tested with prosopagnosia,
[00:33:17.434]my dad also did some testing
[00:33:18.869]and found out he struggles with facial blindness.
[00:33:22.115]In college, my dad and my mom only got together,
[00:33:26.390]I come to find out because of my dad's facial blindness.
[00:33:29.870]My dad was helping out at a freshman orientation
[00:33:32.592]where he would go up to different freshmen
[00:33:34.670]and help them during the orientation
[00:33:37.008]while he ended up going up to my mom three different times,
[00:33:40.385]not realizing it was the same person.
[00:33:43.130]My mom interprets that as,
[00:33:44.707]"Hey, this guy really likes me," and here I am today.
[00:33:51.909]So here are some signs and symptoms
[00:33:54.170]of someone with prosopagnosia.
[00:33:56.020]First of all, I'll show you this little joke.
[00:33:57.760]You had this guy looking at a mirror
[00:33:59.480]and he says, "Fantastic beard and hat, you old chap.
[00:34:02.812]"Let's be friends."
[00:34:04.430]He's not recognizing himself in the mirror.
[00:34:07.340]Now these signs and symptoms,
[00:34:08.299]they're not gonna be true of every person
[00:34:10.920]with facial recognition difficulties,
[00:34:12.184]but I wanted to give you an idea of some of the things
[00:34:14.740]that you might see if someone is struggling
[00:34:17.046]with facial recognition.
[00:34:20.924]This person, they might have friends
[00:34:22.802]who all have very distinctive characteristics.
[00:34:25.533]In school and in camps, I would always tend to gravitate
[00:34:29.994]towards individuals who are from different cultures
[00:34:33.530]or have very unique features
[00:34:35.120]because I could reliably recognize them
[00:34:37.787]out of everybody else.
[00:34:41.850]This person might get confused when watching TV shows
[00:34:44.600]or movies 'cause they get characters confused.
[00:34:47.450]They might recognize familiar people
[00:34:49.182]but maybe inconsistently.
[00:34:52.430]They might walk by you without acknowledging you.
[00:34:56.170]They might go up to strangers.
[00:34:59.160]They might have difficulties recognizing themselves
[00:35:00.924]in the mirror and photo.
[00:35:02.940]So you can see some of these,
[00:35:05.060]you can see can be very common with individuals with autism.
[00:35:08.080]So you gotta wonder, is it the autism
[00:35:10.756]causing some of these difficulties,
[00:35:12.162]just those difficulties with social interactions?
[00:35:15.020]Or are there maybe some facial recognition difficulties
[00:35:18.044]going on as well?
[00:35:20.850]Some more signs and symptoms,
[00:35:22.177]they might struggle to recognize photos of familiar people.
[00:35:25.809]Maybe they won't recognize famous people.
[00:35:28.909]They might react poorly.
[00:35:30.890]If someone has a physical change in appearance,
[00:35:33.040]maybe someone cut their hair
[00:35:34.222]or lost a lot of weight recently.
[00:35:38.216]They might have high anxiety in social situations.
[00:35:41.701]They might avoid using names
[00:35:43.847]or maybe they only know a few names of their classmates.
[00:35:47.843]And they might prefer to be around teachers
[00:35:49.720]rather than classmates because it's easier
[00:35:51.940]to find that one or two adult in the classroom
[00:35:54.910]versus one of the 15, 20, 25 children in the classroom.
[00:36:01.287]One thing that happened to me to show me that yes,
[00:36:05.380]this is something I have.
[00:36:06.348]I ran into a co-worker at a park a few years ago.
[00:36:09.708]This is a co-worker that I thought I could recognize.
[00:36:12.587]I ran into almost every day.
[00:36:15.286]And then at the park, she had her hair up
[00:36:17.172]and had a ball cap on, started talking to me,
[00:36:20.267]and I was like, "I have no idea who this person is."
[00:36:22.944]But I have my dog with me and she recognized my dog.
[00:36:25.429]So I'm like, "Well, she obviously knows me
[00:36:27.517]"'cause she knows my dog."
[00:36:28.760]So I walked with her, I sat down with her.
[00:36:31.419]About 15 minutes later, I finally figured out who she was.
[00:36:35.470]I tried to run through, I thought maybe with the ball cap,
[00:36:38.750]maybe she was a softball player.
[00:36:40.020]So I was running through all the people
[00:36:41.010]I play softball with, and then I was running through,
[00:36:43.150]well, maybe she's from my church,
[00:36:44.017]and it was running through all the people from my church.
[00:36:46.160]Finally, it was her voice that clicked for me
[00:36:48.537]and I figured out who she was
[00:36:50.070]and we had a good laugh about it when she was like,
[00:36:52.157]"You follow me and you had no clue who I was?"
[00:37:00.010]Other things, another thing in college
[00:37:03.610]that I noticed is teachers would often put us in groups.
[00:37:06.445]If we could stay in that room in groups, I was fine.
[00:37:08.577]But if she had the group's go into other areas,
[00:37:11.607]go outside the room to work together.
[00:37:13.724]As soon as we left the room,
[00:37:15.800]if I didn't keep an eye on my group members, I lost them.
[00:37:18.190]I had no clue who the group members
[00:37:20.090]that I was just assigned to with were.
[00:37:23.050]However, there's some nice positives
[00:37:24.844]about having facial recognition difficulties.
[00:37:26.900]One thing it's very, very hard for me
[00:37:28.996]to form a bad first impression of someone.
[00:37:31.600]Even if I do have a bad first impression of someone,
[00:37:34.467]likely I'm not gonna remember it the next time we meet, so.
[00:37:40.970]And then, oh, and reluctance to join groups.
[00:37:46.630]There's also some research and this is the part
[00:37:48.870]they're still trying to figure out
[00:37:50.016]is if facial blindness also might occur
[00:37:52.760]with some other conditions.
[00:37:54.740]Specifically, they're looking at navigation and topography.
[00:37:58.611]A lot of individuals who struggle with facial blindness
[00:38:01.070]might have difficulties with that, maybe body perception.
[00:38:03.980]They might be sensitive to movement
[00:38:06.170]especially facial movement,
[00:38:07.840]differentiating between left and right.
[00:38:10.427]And the identification of race or color.
[00:38:13.042]Some new things that they're looking at
[00:38:15.360]is maybe individuals with facial recognition difficulties
[00:38:18.702]might also sometimes have aphantasia,
[00:38:23.780]I think I'm saying that right, which is an inability
[00:38:25.880]to make any visual picture in your mind.
[00:38:29.830]And some new research that they're trying to see
[00:38:32.270]if there's any connection between synesthesia,
[00:38:36.520]where you experience one sense as another.
[00:38:38.760]So for example, my niece experiences numbers
[00:38:42.979]as having colors as well.
[00:38:49.490]So I wanted to give you a perspective
[00:38:50.979]of a child with facial blindness
[00:38:52.986]since many of you work with children.
[00:38:55.856]13-year-old Tim McDonough from Boston
[00:38:58.410]who is severely face blind.
[00:39:00.890]So can you describe what it feels like?
[00:39:03.818]When someone comes up, you know,
[00:39:07.010]you're supposed to know who they are.
[00:39:08.700]I usually just say, "Hi, nice to see you."
[00:39:11.219]So you sometimes pretend?
[00:39:13.350]Yeah. You fake it.
[00:39:14.520]I fake it, yeah.
[00:39:15.989]You think it's not your mom?
[00:39:17.476]Yeah. Okay.
[00:39:19.280]So that actually, it was your mom.
[00:39:21.340]Tim is working with the Harvard team
[00:39:23.250]to see if they can help him learn
[00:39:24.680]to recognize his mother's face.
[00:39:26.930]Is this one your mom or not?
[00:39:31.150]Yes, we can start at the top.
[00:39:32.250]We could do eyebrows, eyes, nose.
[00:39:35.060]You could even use the cheeks there.
[00:39:37.300]It's part of a pilot program
[00:39:38.952]to see if face blindness might someday be treatable.
[00:39:42.891]It's a little bit harder.
[00:39:44.880]So far it's not.
[00:39:46.090]I don't know.
[00:39:47.920]I just hope that nobody tries to talk to me
[00:39:52.272]because if they do, they--
[00:39:55.730]They wanna talk about something you've done with them.
[00:39:58.150]Yeah, and I don't know who they are.
[00:40:02.640]So it must be really hard to make friends.
[00:40:05.400]It is, yeah, takes me a while to make friends.
[00:40:14.345]So I wanted to go over
[00:40:15.730]some common facial recognition errors that you might see.
[00:40:19.330]First of all is twinning,
[00:40:21.010]and this is where you don't realize that a person
[00:40:23.720]in two different contexts is actually the same person.
[00:40:26.575]So in my case, the person sitting next to me at church,
[00:40:30.079]it took me I think about a year, year and a half
[00:40:32.880]to realize that same person sitting next to me in church
[00:40:34.845]was the same person I played handbills
[00:40:36.940]with on Wednesday nights.
[00:40:39.210]Merging is thinking that two or more people
[00:40:41.146]are the same person.
[00:40:43.040]This happened to me.
[00:40:44.210]I worked early intervention for a number of years
[00:40:47.309]and would go into homes and was working with a mom
[00:40:50.504]on providing interventions for her child for a while
[00:40:53.710]and then all of a sudden,
[00:40:55.280]I was talking to who I thought was mom
[00:40:57.627]at an intervention visit, and mentioned something
[00:41:01.543]and the person was like, "I'm the sister."
[00:41:05.670]And she got pretty offended that I confused mom
[00:41:07.977]with the sister and I had no idea
[00:41:11.000]when that person changed to the sister,
[00:41:13.030]if it was just for that visit
[00:41:14.300]or if I'd been working with a sister for a number of weeks,
[00:41:16.700]and it was very confusing and awkward.
[00:41:20.830]Blending is where you confuse people
[00:41:22.045]that share similar identity traits.
[00:41:26.580]This happened to me working on early intervention team
[00:41:30.220]where the occupational therapist
[00:41:32.160]and the physical therapist both had long blonde hair,
[00:41:35.689]similar body types, and to this day,
[00:41:38.183]I still can't tell 'em apart,
[00:41:40.220]so we just came up with a system
[00:41:42.940]where I combine their names together
[00:41:44.260]and they both respond to the same name.
[00:41:47.410]Non-recognition is where you just don't recognize a person.
[00:41:52.240]Last summer, this happened to me with a close family member.
[00:41:55.311]I was on a bike ride with my nieces and nephews
[00:41:57.985]and I stopped with my nephew to fix a bike.
[00:42:00.369]My niece had ridden back to see if we were okay,
[00:42:03.150]and she was wearing a helmet and she came back.
[00:42:05.417]"Hey, you guys need any help?"
[00:42:07.000]And I thought it was a complete stranger.
[00:42:08.830]I was like, "Hey, no, we're fine."
[00:42:10.711]And a few minutes or about 30 seconds later,
[00:42:14.695]the voice connected and I realized that was my niece.
[00:42:17.384]And that was really hard,
[00:42:19.060]someone I thought I had no problems recognizing
[00:42:21.127]a family member who I love
[00:42:22.797]and not be able to recognize them.
[00:42:25.840]And then finally, a mistaken identity
[00:42:28.190]where you think a person is someone else entirely.
[00:42:30.402]And this happened to me about two years ago at a funeral.
[00:42:34.621]I was at a funeral for someone at church
[00:42:37.838]and then all of a sudden, a man comes walking by
[00:42:41.273]and I had thought that was the person
[00:42:43.331]I was there for the funeral and so I was like,
[00:42:46.637]"Oh my gosh, did this person just raise from the dead
[00:42:49.577]"or what is going on here?"
[00:42:50.750]I confuse the two people,
[00:42:52.823]I mistaken the guy walking around as the person
[00:42:56.900]whom the funeral was for.
[00:43:01.537]There's a couple different ways
[00:43:02.815]to get screened or diagnosed
[00:43:04.753]with facial blindness difficulties.
[00:43:06.996]There's a few informal online tests.
[00:43:09.420]The first is the Famous Faces Test
[00:43:12.190]and I'm gonna show you an example of this in a little bit.
[00:43:15.200]There's also the Exposure Based Memory Test,
[00:43:17.286]and a Prosopagnosia Index,
[00:43:19.420]which is just a 20 question questionnaire
[00:43:22.440]that you can take online and there's links to here
[00:43:25.000]and in my handouts.
[00:43:25.880]You should be able to recommend,
[00:43:27.590]you should be able to follow.
[00:43:29.612]There's also some diagnostic tests that you can take.
[00:43:34.100]Usually, you're gonna have to go
[00:43:35.410]through a neurologist for these.
[00:43:36.820]Your school psychologist might have access
[00:43:38.446]to the Kaufman assessment kit,
[00:43:40.330]which has a facial recognition section for children.
[00:43:43.340]Other tests that you might see,
[00:43:44.603]the Benton Facial Recognition Test
[00:43:46.255]or the Cambridge Face Memory Test is very common as well.
[00:43:51.790]So here is an example of the famous faces tests,
[00:43:54.890]you'll be shown some pictures of a famous individual.
[00:43:58.460]So in this case, you have to decide
[00:44:00.530]which face is Oprah Winfrey.
[00:44:02.820]And it gives you a checkbox if you don't know
[00:44:04.790]who that person is at all, and then you get a score.
[00:44:07.960]So you can see I put an example my score there.
[00:44:12.020]I got 19 wherein the average score is 30,
[00:44:14.270]and I scored higher than zero
[00:44:15.422]out of every 10 people on this test.
[00:44:20.140]The Cambridge Face Memory Test,
[00:44:21.500]this is a test often used by university studies.
[00:44:24.680]So in this case, you memorize a face shown
[00:44:26.940]from a couple different angles,
[00:44:28.158]and then you have to figure out which face is that face
[00:44:32.777]when shown an array of faces.
[00:44:36.707]And there's also a place to take this test online as well
[00:44:38.968]and then you can also contact researchers
[00:44:42.292]to participate in studies
[00:44:43.790]if you do have facial recognition difficulties.
[00:44:49.160]Finally, there is this Exposure Based Memory Tests,
[00:44:52.740]and in this test, you are shown a face,
[00:44:55.230]and then you're showing another face,
[00:44:56.880]and you have to decide if that new face is brand new
[00:44:59.520]or if it's a face you've seen before.
[00:45:01.709]So on this test, you can see I got 48
[00:45:05.910]out of 75 questions correct.
[00:45:07.467]This says, scores below 40 may indicate prosopagnosia.
[00:45:11.130]I think, one reason I scored better on this
[00:45:12.395]is because I had many more clues I could use like the hair.
[00:45:17.920]It wasn't just the face.
[00:45:22.090]You can also do some informal assessment.
[00:45:25.806]You can ask a child some questions about a person in a photo
[00:45:30.083]especially if the person in the photo
[00:45:31.879]is not wearing familiar clothes or in a familiar context.
[00:45:36.829]You can also maybe cover the hair of someone
[00:45:39.360]while showing the photo.
[00:45:41.850]You can also take pictures on your phone
[00:45:44.610]and crop the pictures so you can just see the face
[00:45:46.656]or maybe use Photoshop so you're just showing the face.
[00:45:49.926]Taking pictures, pictures of familiar people
[00:45:52.413]wearing funny hats or maybe new clothing
[00:45:56.130]so that you can rule out
[00:45:57.200]if they're using other recognition strategies.
[00:46:00.520]Another fun one is to use the online virtual hair salon
[00:46:02.946]so you can use this for familiar people or famous people
[00:46:06.250]and completely change their hair
[00:46:08.319]and see if the person can still recognize the individuals.
[00:46:12.620]Like we mentioned earlier, someone who struggles
[00:46:14.380]with facial recognition might not realize
[00:46:16.700]that they struggle with this.
[00:46:22.640]Some places to get tested.
[00:46:23.715]You can get a referral to a neurologist.
[00:46:28.060]This can be a little difficult
[00:46:29.480]'cause there are still many doctors
[00:46:30.780]who have not heard of facial blindness.
[00:46:33.030]Other places that you can go to is some of the universities
[00:46:36.116]who are currently doing studies in this.
[00:46:38.743]So Bournemouth University,
[00:46:41.570]the Prosopagnosia Research Center,
[00:46:43.140]which includes Dartmouth, and Harvard,
[00:46:44.910]and the University of London,
[00:46:46.690]or the Carnegie Mellon University.
[00:46:49.240]This is where I was tested with facial blindness
[00:46:51.458]a number of years ago.
[00:46:55.810]Okay, I'm gonna show you another little video here.
[00:46:59.000]Hilary Doyle was the exploring facial blindness,
[00:47:01.460]and at the end of this video,
[00:47:02.570]there is a little test that she does with this person.
[00:47:06.820]So I'm curious to see how you guys will do.
[00:47:08.644]Ironically, when I did this test,
[00:47:10.430]I got it wrong the first time and then a couple days later,
[00:47:12.800]I'll watch the video again,
[00:47:13.902]getting ready for this presentation
[00:47:15.600]and I got it wrong again, so we'll see how you do.
[00:47:20.840]We always had an awareness
[00:47:21.897]that I didn't recognize faces very well.
[00:47:25.356]I would say that I see it holistically.
[00:47:27.870]I'm told that subconsciously,
[00:47:29.330]I break it down into geometric shapes.
[00:47:32.030]I basically have categorized people
[00:47:33.898]to certain numbers of faces in the world.
[00:47:37.280]And I automatically put somebody in a slot.
[00:47:40.690]There would be middle aged, balding man,
[00:47:44.030]slim, attractive, dark-haired women.
[00:47:45.834]I group them together and automatically
[00:47:48.068]put them in one area.
[00:47:49.960]If I was to leave and to come back with another woman,
[00:47:51.634]do you think you could distinguish my face from hers?
[00:47:54.235]Absolutely.
[00:47:55.420]Let's test it out.
[00:47:56.360]Bring it on.
[00:47:57.613](upbeat techno music)
[00:48:04.080]It's tougher than I thought,
[00:48:05.970]and I'm going to say Hilary is the one on my left.
[00:48:09.170]I would say that is Hilary,
[00:48:11.550]mostly think it's Hilary because of the smile.
[00:48:13.992]And I think I remember the smile.
[00:48:16.500]You're wrong, Jeff.
[00:48:17.995]I'm so sorry. (laughs)
[00:48:19.341](laughs) I can't believe it.
[00:48:23.173]All right, I thought that'd be a little fun.
[00:48:26.230]We always had an awareness that--
[00:48:29.060]And if you discovered through the course
[00:48:30.530]of this presentation that you are struggling
[00:48:31.981]with some of these activities on facial recognition,
[00:48:34.740]talk to me afterwards,
[00:48:35.573]I'd love to talk to you and help you out.
[00:48:38.900]So a person doesn't just rely on facial clues
[00:48:42.140]to recognize someone.
[00:48:43.110]So look at the picture on the right there,
[00:48:44.975]I want to see if you can recognize
[00:48:46.899]the three men in those pictures, in that picture.
[00:48:55.690]So when you look at that picture,
[00:48:57.120]you're probably using a number of clues.
[00:48:58.200]You're probably looking at their clothing,
[00:48:59.894]you're looking at their hairstyle,
[00:49:01.720]getting an idea of their age.
[00:49:02.936]You can see the American flag on the side.
[00:49:05.306]You can see this stately building
[00:49:07.872]that they're walking next to.
[00:49:09.217]So even without faces, many of you have probably realized
[00:49:12.940]that you're looking at a picture of George W. Bush,
[00:49:15.407]Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton in that picture.
[00:49:18.930]So we use lots of things to figure out, to recognize people.
[00:49:25.050]A big one is clothing that people wear.
[00:49:28.790]Problem with this is clothing changes usually every day.
[00:49:32.320]So if you're trying to remember someone
[00:49:34.448]based on their clothing, it can be really difficult.
[00:49:37.350]I did this a lot as a child.
[00:49:39.570]And I remember at a sports camp,
[00:49:41.940]I finally figured out if I memorize
[00:49:43.729]the other children's shoes.
[00:49:45.500]The shoes at a sports camp generally don't change
[00:49:48.170]from day to day.
[00:49:49.370]So if I could remember their shoes,
[00:49:50.283]I could find that same child the next day.
[00:49:54.100]Voice is another big one that individuals
[00:49:55.846]who struggle with facial recognition rely on.
[00:49:59.330]Just last week or a couple weeks ago
[00:50:02.397]before this whole coronavirus thing,
[00:50:04.500]I was in Walgreens standing in line,
[00:50:07.650]I did not recognize the person in front of me
[00:50:09.201]until she talked to the cashier
[00:50:10.939]and I figured out that she is someone
[00:50:13.333]that I've done some music things with before.
[00:50:17.383]Hairstyle's another big one.
[00:50:19.114]So be careful if you ever change your hairstyle.
[00:50:21.427]My boss, a couple months ago,
[00:50:23.527]she usually wears her hair down
[00:50:25.227]and she put her hair up in a ponytail.
[00:50:27.740]I couldn't find her.
[00:50:28.660]I think I walked by her three times
[00:50:30.290]before I figured out that that was my boss standing there.
[00:50:35.090]Other ones facial hair, marks or scars, distinctive jewelry,
[00:50:39.995]the overall body shape, the person's gait or behavior,
[00:50:44.470]their race, they might wear consistent perfume,
[00:50:47.910]it might be the context you always run
[00:50:50.350]into this person at work or tattoos.
[00:50:53.890]The problem is is these non-facial identity clues
[00:50:56.886]are not as reliable as facial recognition.
[00:51:00.357]So a person who struggles with facial recognition
[00:51:02.934]might be using all these clues
[00:51:04.456]and might be using them pretty automatically,
[00:51:06.650]but you can still have failures
[00:51:08.500]because these aren't as reliable.
[00:51:11.670]But it's because of these clues that many individuals
[00:51:13.438]who do struggle with facial recognition
[00:51:15.610]might not even realize it.
[00:51:23.231]All right, so some strategies for going out together.
[00:51:27.430]This is specifically, if you can recognize faces,
[00:51:30.469]but you're going out with someone
[00:51:31.991]who struggles with recognizing faces.
[00:51:34.600]First of all, greeting anyone you've come across
[00:51:37.016]by name and giving those context clues.
[00:51:39.537]"Hey, Joe, it's so great seeing you
[00:51:41.327]"at music class the other day."
[00:51:45.230]Using names each time when seeing another person,
[00:51:48.870]helping them identify characters or movies and TV shows,
[00:51:53.180]wearing familiar clothing,
[00:51:55.550]reestablishing yourself after being out of sight.
[00:51:57.669]So if you go to the bathroom and you come back,
[00:51:59.902]you might just say hey, "It's Ashley again,"
[00:52:03.690]and making a plan for where you're gonna sit or meet.
[00:52:07.821]So I have a picture here on the right.
[00:52:11.090]One of my co workers recently got a haircut
[00:52:13.780]and she was worried that I wouldn't be able
[00:52:15.020]to recognize her with the haircut,
[00:52:17.270]so she sent me a picture of her bracelet here
[00:52:19.270]and she texted me,
[00:52:20.166]"Hey, Ashley, I wanted to warn you
[00:52:22.577]"that I cut all my hair off.
[00:52:23.767]"I will be wearing my black bracelet that I always wear."
[00:52:28.644]So letting the person know
[00:52:29.880]what you will be wearing is very helpful.
[00:52:33.430]Being very specific about where you will meet,
[00:52:36.950]greeting the person first,
[00:52:38.050]so don't wait for them to recognize you,
[00:52:39.576]go ahead and say, "Hey, so and so."
[00:52:43.910]Wearing something distinctive like the bracelet
[00:52:45.850]my coworker wore,
[00:52:48.390]printing out a photo or sending a text message
[00:52:50.352]of what you're wearing that day,
[00:52:53.820]and maybe studying a picture of someone
[00:52:56.492]that you're gonna be seeing over the in a few days.
[00:53:00.240]So an example here, this is by Sheila Carney.
[00:53:04.420]She is a mother of a young boy with autism
[00:53:07.108]who is nonverbal and struggles with facial recognition.
[00:53:11.350]So I'm just gonna read this to you guys.
[00:53:14.317]"If I knew that Grandma and Grandpa
[00:53:15.787]"were coming over on Saturday,
[00:53:17.187]"we started on Monday night the week before
[00:53:19.037]"looking at pictures of them and labeling them.
[00:53:21.027]"Every night, I point to a picture and say, 'Who's this?'
[00:53:23.809]"'Grandma.'
[00:53:25.157]"He was not yet vocal, but enjoyed pointing
[00:53:27.757]"at all the faces repeatedly so I would tell him their name.
[00:53:31.377]"When Saturday came around, he was less likely to be upset
[00:53:33.970]"that Grandma showed up.
[00:53:35.667]"He was familiar with the concept of Grandma
[00:53:37.517]"and had seen her face all week.
[00:53:39.427]"After months of doing this activity,
[00:53:41.297]"he would go to her when she arrived
[00:53:44.211]"rather than running in the opposite direction."
[00:53:49.720]So if you have prosopagnosia,
[00:53:51.850]if you struggle with facial recognition,
[00:53:53.310]here's a few tips for you.
[00:53:55.046]First of all, if you're gonna meet someone, get there first.
[00:53:57.612]Let the other person find you.
[00:53:59.497]What I like to do get there first and maybe get out a book.
[00:54:01.909]That way, you're not expected
[00:54:03.357]to recognize the people walking by.
[00:54:07.290]Consider explaining to your friends and family
[00:54:09.018]the struggles you have.
[00:54:10.640]They can be a huge help to you.
[00:54:13.363]Making notes about people
[00:54:14.853]that you're gonna run across again,
[00:54:16.870]but you have to be very careful
[00:54:17.978]'cause some people can be a little sensitive
[00:54:21.214]if you start pointing out
[00:54:23.100]some of their distinctive features.
[00:54:25.960]I would often do this when I would go
[00:54:28.460]in early intervention and work in day cares.
[00:54:31.520]Usually, there's three or four adults in the room
[00:54:32.802]and a bunch of children.
[00:54:34.414]So I started writing down the teacher
[00:54:37.920]that I was working with, she had short blonde hair,
[00:54:40.550]and earrings, and she parted her hair on the side.
[00:54:43.750]Then the next time I go there,
[00:54:45.710]I could look at all the adults in the classroom
[00:54:47.480]and narrow down who it is I was supposed to talk to.
[00:54:51.481]Just remembering the clothing of your party
[00:54:54.010]especially if you're gonna be going into a crowd.
[00:54:57.180]Avoid using names or just going with the,
[00:54:59.930]"What was your name again?"
[00:55:03.270]I use this one all the time,
[00:55:04.680]letting others introduce themselves
[00:55:06.056]or just introduce the person that you're with that you know.
[00:55:09.239]I always say to people,
[00:55:11.337]"Oh, I always forget to introduce people."
[00:55:13.340]And nobody ever knows the difference, I hope.
[00:55:17.970]Smiling and using a friendly nod with everyone
[00:55:20.060]is an overall good strategy.
[00:55:23.483]If you're trying to find someone specific
[00:55:25.174]ask someone of the opposite sex.
[00:55:27.230]So if you're trying to find a male, maybe Mike,
[00:55:29.559]asking a female to help you find Mike is helpful
[00:55:32.950]because then you don't accidentally
[00:55:34.490]ask Mike himself to find Mike.
[00:55:38.370]And then take a friend with you.
[00:55:39.530]Friends are very helpful for helping you find who you need.
[00:55:44.230]And lastly, there's some technology that's coming out.
[00:55:47.111]I haven't had a chance to use it myself
[00:55:49.089]but Google Glass or there's something new called OrCam MyMe
[00:55:53.660]that I'm interested in trying out
[00:55:55.310]and I have a little video to show you what that looks like.
[00:56:00.700]Your time at work and at play
[00:56:02.123]can be super competitive and demanding.
[00:56:05.270]Oftentimes, you'll not get a second shot
[00:56:07.102]to make the most of an opportunity.
[00:56:09.244]This is why OrCam invented the MyMe,
[00:56:11.872]a tiny wearable device that focuses
[00:56:14.120]on people you encounter and will encounter.
[00:56:16.967]Whether you're an entrepreneur or an art teacher,
[00:56:19.680]MyMe is relevant for you and your many circles of people.
[00:56:23.204]This one time purchase will support you
[00:56:25.248]for unlimited events, meetings, and people details
[00:56:28.509]that are helpful and meaningful for your life.
[00:56:31.290]This sophisticated piece of technology
[00:56:32.867]is equipped with high definition camera
[00:56:35.202]that's powered by incredible AI software
[00:56:38.110]that will act as your personal assistant
[00:56:39.638]to add up the missing pieces,
[00:56:41.676]without relying on any connectivity,
[00:56:43.903]cloud services, or a miracle,
[00:56:46.388]you could prepare for any event, work-related,
[00:56:49.260]social, or whatever by easily loading a dedicated database
[00:56:52.724]to make sure that the right moment
[00:56:54.810]you know with whom you're speaking
[00:56:56.360]plus additional information to help you maximize success.
[00:56:59.810]And if you bump into a chance encounter, no worries,
[00:57:02.500]OrCam MyMe will help you remember
[00:57:04.449]who, when, and where you met,
[00:57:06.730]and add them to your contact list on the go
[00:57:08.640]without filling your pockets
[00:57:09.850]with business cards or scribbled notes.
[00:57:11.932](upbeat music)
[00:57:17.760]All right, then I wanted to go over
[00:57:18.990]a few classroom strategies and I just wanted to remind you,
[00:57:22.108]if one in 50 people struggle with facial recognition
[00:57:25.091]and have prosopagnosia, it's probably pretty likely
[00:57:28.740]that someone in your class might struggle
[00:57:31.180]with facial recognition, so keep some of these in mind.
[00:57:35.390]First of all, at the beginning of the year,
[00:57:37.010]if you're playing get to know you games,
[00:57:38.750]try to choose ones that don't require you
[00:57:41.170]to remember faces or use names.
[00:57:44.807]Name tags or desk labels can be helpful
[00:57:47.210]and think about where you place those desk tags
[00:57:52.570]so that individuals who have facial blindness
[00:57:55.090]can see him as well,
[00:57:55.923]so maybe put them on the side of the desk,
[00:57:57.523]not just on top of the desk.
[00:58:00.952]Having assigned seating so that way,
[00:58:03.010]you always know that Joe sits over here
[00:58:05.133]and John sits over here.
[00:58:08.040]For older children, you might wanna print out
[00:58:09.348]a seating chart so that they can refer to that
[00:58:12.114]in the classroom.
[00:58:14.793]Giving clues, especially if you're gonna be doing
[00:58:17.535]some group projects.
[00:58:18.897]Maybe have the child who doesn't have prosopagnosia
[00:58:22.180]find the child with prosopagnosia
[00:58:24.375]or giving those clues like,
[00:58:25.817]"Why don't you go sit over there with Johnny
[00:58:27.797]"who has that wonderful shirt on today,
[00:58:30.257]"wonderful blue shirt on today?"
[00:58:33.742]using intentional grouping, so maybe consider groups
[00:58:36.573]that have children that maybe have different hair colors
[00:58:40.240]or hairstyles or maybe that are wearing
[00:58:42.020]different colored shirts that day.
[00:58:45.270]Small groups are always helpful,
[00:58:47.600]that way you only have a few people
[00:58:49.110]that you have to try to remember who they are.
[00:58:54.394]Photos can be helpful but not always.
[00:58:56.740]So myself, I find photos helpful.
[00:58:58.883]However, I have really hard time matching up
[00:59:01.697]the still photo with the live person.
[00:59:05.710]I have to kind of hold the photo up to the person
[00:59:08.330]and look back and forth and it might take me a few minutes.
[00:59:11.390]It sometimes takes me much longer than that
[00:59:13.900]to figure out if that's the same person or not.
[00:59:18.370]If you have children pass out papers,
[00:59:19.816]have this child handout blank papers
[00:59:22.019]instead of passing back papers with names on it.
[00:59:26.370]And then just structuring up some activities,
[00:59:28.587]thinking of structured activities during recess times,
[00:59:31.757]maybe doing lunch buddies or table topics,
[00:59:35.048]thinking about school clubs to help that individual
[00:59:38.153]meet up with others with similar interests.
[00:59:42.040]And then teachers and other professionals in the building,
[00:59:44.051]maybe think about wearing some unique consistent items,
[00:59:46.769]maybe some jewelry that you wear everyday
[00:59:49.840]or scarf or wearing the same shoes every day.
[00:59:54.020]And then just using the names of classmates frequently
[00:59:56.305]while gesturing and keeping in mind
[00:59:58.566]that not all children will be able
[01:00:00.784]to follow a point or a gesture.
[01:00:02.960]So again, you might wanna use those clues
[01:00:06.340]like what color shirt they're wearing
[01:00:08.340]or things like that when doing that.
[01:00:13.440]In PE, wearing the colors of teammates,
[01:00:17.310]so making sure you're wearing those jerseys.
[01:00:19.225]I remember in junior high PE, we didn't wear jerseys
[01:00:22.910]and I ended up throwing the ball
[01:00:24.390]to someone on the other team,
[01:00:26.470]and my coach was very mad about that.
[01:00:30.710]Playing to the child's strengths,
[01:00:31.860]so figuring out what are they using to recognize people?
[01:00:34.730]Are they using voice?
[01:00:35.990]Are they using clothes?
[01:00:36.980]And building on those strengths
[01:00:38.340]to help them recognize others?
[01:00:40.540]And then teach them to use
[01:00:41.470]those other recognition strategies.
[01:00:43.070]So if they're using clothes right now,
[01:00:45.070]maybe teach them to listen to voices
[01:00:46.930]or teach them to look at hairstyles.
[01:00:49.290]Audio books can be a great way to help a child
[01:00:51.452]learn to start distinguishing between voices
[01:00:56.710]and then social skills instruction,
[01:00:58.742]which we're already doing for our kids with autism,
[01:01:01.248]but you might include teaching them
[01:01:03.900]how to ask questions that fish for information
[01:01:05.950]to try to figure out who the person is
[01:01:07.636]but keeping the questions general enough so that,
[01:01:13.040]so that they're not...
[01:01:17.080]Sorry, so they're not revealing the fact
[01:01:20.540]that they're not recognizing the person
[01:01:22.160]and then just teaching them to be able to initiate
[01:01:24.390]and respond to greetings appropriately.
[01:01:27.520]And then specific instruction on recognizing emotions,
[01:01:29.803]considering not just the facial features,
[01:01:32.870]or the emotions, which a lot of times,
[01:01:34.090]I think we focus on as special educators,
[01:01:36.254]but also the non-facial clues.
[01:01:37.883]So when someone's mad, you might see their fist tense up,
[01:01:41.010]their shoulders might kind of tense up,
[01:01:42.719]you might see wrinkle.
[01:01:44.032]So considering not just facial clues
[01:01:46.880]but whole body clues of emotions.
[01:01:51.500]Another piece of software
[01:01:53.574]which shows really interesting promise,
[01:01:56.610]especially for children with autism
[01:01:58.320]in recognizing whole faces is a scheme called Face It.
[01:02:02.063]This is an app that you can get on your iPad
[01:02:03.868]and it's a free app.
[01:02:05.975]Children with autism showed better holistic face recognition
[01:02:10.326]and also eye recognition after playing this
[01:02:12.740]completely on their own.
[01:02:14.103]But there still needs to be more research on it
[01:02:15.903]because the research wasn't showing much help
[01:02:19.473]with being able to match faces
[01:02:21.440]if they changed in expression or orientation
[01:02:23.980]or to remember faces over time.
[01:02:26.207]But I wanted to kind of show you a little bit
[01:02:28.320]of what this looks like.
[01:02:29.620]I took pictures of my family members
[01:02:30.950]doing various expressions and also in different contexts.
[01:02:35.175]So the left side of the screen is gonna show the games
[01:02:37.720]that where you have to identify the person
[01:02:39.970]and the right side of the screen
[01:02:40.829]is where you have to identify the motion.
[01:02:43.250]So the first one is just to choose which one it matches.
[01:02:47.640]This one, you have to pop the bubble.
[01:02:49.541]On the left side, you had to find grandma,
[01:02:51.730]on the right side, you had to figure out
[01:02:53.720]which face looked mad.
[01:02:56.325]This one was a just a matching one.
[01:02:58.608]So on the left side, you had to find me.
[01:03:01.210]On the right side, you had to match the emotions.
[01:03:04.850]So different people might have a mad face,
[01:03:06.719]so you have to recognize that mad face
[01:03:08.175]across different faces.
[01:03:11.130]And this one where you fused together.
[01:03:13.030]So on the left side, you had to find Grandma's eyes
[01:03:16.000]and Trinity's mouth and on the right side,
[01:03:17.990]you had to find excited eyes and a sad mouth.
[01:03:24.510]Then finally, I just wanted to specifically put out there
[01:03:27.978]some ideas for parents to consider,
[01:03:30.621]especially some of those school and safety considerations.
[01:03:34.702]If your child has struggles with facial blindness,
[01:03:38.810]most of the school personnel will have never heard
[01:03:41.200]of facial blindness or prosopagnosia.
[01:03:43.210]So thinking about how you're gonna inform school staff.
[01:03:46.860]There is a great Facebook's support group out there
[01:03:49.808]for parents of children with prosopagnosia.
[01:03:52.449]And on that Facebook group, a parent has posted a handout
[01:03:56.211]that they give to their teachers
[01:03:57.560]at the beginning of every school year.
[01:03:59.590]So I encourage you to check that out.
[01:04:02.760]You're also gonna need to have some safety considerations
[01:04:04.569]for pickup and drop off time.
[01:04:06.490]How is your child gonna find you
[01:04:07.700]when you pick them up at the end of the day
[01:04:09.500]so they don't go home with a stranger?
[01:04:11.660]And having those safety things
[01:04:12.700]in place for emergency drills and field trips,
[01:04:16.920]you might wanna write something into their IEP
[01:04:18.531]about someone being with them during emergency drills
[01:04:22.060]so they don't go off and get lost.
[01:04:25.290]Bullying can also be a big concern for someone
[01:04:28.120]with facial blindness because the child might not be able
[01:04:30.810]to identify a bully if present.
[01:04:34.320]And this can cause the child to maybe feel like everyone
[01:04:37.260]is picking on them because they can't identify
[01:04:39.229]who specifically is picking on them.
[01:04:42.510]And then finally, does your child need a 504 and IEP plan
[01:04:45.690]to address some accommodations
[01:04:47.150]for facial recognition deficits?
[01:04:48.609]Or if your child has an IEP already,
[01:04:51.074]what accommodations for facial recognition difficulties
[01:04:53.796]might be necessary for your child?
[01:04:58.160]Then I wanted to put a few
[01:04:59.130]of my favorite resources out there.
[01:05:03.000]Facebook has many great support groups,
[01:05:04.820]so I put the parent one right there.
[01:05:06.990]Reddit also has a good one.
[01:05:08.662]One of the best books I found specifically for children
[01:05:11.527]who struggle with facial recognition
[01:05:13.348]is "Understanding Facial Recognition Difficulties
[01:05:15.750]"in Children," by Nancy Mindick.
[01:05:18.639]A few websites and these are also some of the same ones
[01:05:21.032]where you can get some of the testing done.
[01:05:23.254]And then there's a link
[01:05:24.700]to the 60 Minutes facial blindness video.
[01:05:29.690]All right, so what questions do you have?
[01:05:32.777]I don't mind at all if you are asking questions
[01:05:35.248]about my facial blindness, that is fine with me, so.
[01:05:54.890]This is the part where it's really hard
[01:05:56.366]not to see the faces 'cause we don't know
[01:05:58.520]if somebody has a question.
[01:05:59.600]Okay, there coming in, they're coming in. (laughs)
[01:06:02.780]So about pets, I would say my recognition of pets
[01:06:06.181]is probably just about as good
[01:06:07.730]as anyone else's recognition of pets.
[01:06:09.902]Your own pet, you're gonna be pretty good at recognizing
[01:06:12.702]even amongst similar species,
[01:06:14.547]but I find pets are usually pretty good
[01:06:17.137]at having very distinct characteristics anyway.
[01:06:21.360]So I think, like that picture I showed earlier with.
[01:06:24.188]I think they were meerkats,
[01:06:25.821]I think everybody's gonna struggle with those
[01:06:27.803]but with things like dogs and cats, I have no problems.
[01:06:36.080]Someone asked about what this might look like
[01:06:37.753]for a student who has facial recognition difficulties
[01:06:42.410]but no autism.
[01:06:45.380]I don't know if it would fall
[01:06:46.260]under the other health impaired category,
[01:06:48.160]but I think you could do a 504 plan in those cases
[01:06:52.190]because in this case, it's just a few accomodations
[01:06:56.468]that they would need to be successful
[01:06:59.339]in the classroom environment, but they wouldn't necessarily
[01:07:01.925]need any educational accommodations.
[01:07:04.374]So I would talk to the school about maybe a 504 plan
[01:07:07.191]or maybe start with your doctor
[01:07:09.037]about getting it diagnosed so that goes easier.
[01:07:16.950]Let's see, do you think we have a high number
[01:07:19.580]of children with facial blindness?
[01:07:21.550]I do, the studies have been pretty consistent
[01:07:25.300]in that about one in 50 children ratio.
[01:07:28.270]So I think about right now,
[01:07:29.709]I'm working at East High School here in Lincoln,
[01:07:31.954]which has 2,400 students, so if that ratio holds true,
[01:07:36.700]and now, I gotta do math on the spot, but that'd be, okay,
[01:07:41.350]I can't do the math on the spot, I'm too nervous.
[01:07:43.180]But there that would mean there's a lot of children
[01:07:45.820]in that high school who struggle with facial recognition.
[01:07:48.230]So think about your elementary schools,
[01:07:50.040]how many children in that?
[01:07:51.830]If one in 50 children struggle with facial recognition,
[01:07:54.672]there's probably children in your classrooms,
[01:07:57.810]in your community, that struggle with this,
[01:08:00.206]but probably don't even realize it
[01:08:01.670]and their families and teachers don't even realize it.
[01:08:07.740]Okay, let's see.
[01:08:12.410]Would someone has to know about this
[01:08:13.750]to recommend for testing?
[01:08:15.127]I think, as a parent or as an advocate for child,
[01:08:21.300]if you suspect this, I think,
[01:08:24.480]sharing that information with individuals
[01:08:26.620]who are doing the testing or sharing those resources
[01:08:28.365]to find out more about it, it's hard to...
[01:08:35.930]In the school setting, it might be up to the parent
[01:08:39.308]or the family advocates to really push
[01:08:41.239]for some facial recognition testing.
[01:08:44.460]And like I said, there might not be
[01:08:46.227]a whole lot out there available for children.
[01:08:48.950]That Kaufman test, maybe schools have it.
[01:08:51.240]So your best bet is to go through a neurologist
[01:08:53.128]or the universities that have testing.
[01:08:57.652]However, it it will be hard for children
[01:09:00.597]because the research is still new.
[01:09:02.261]Most of those tests are normed for adults,
[01:09:05.140]so it's gonna be difficult.
[01:09:07.209]But hopefully we can raise awareness
[01:09:09.494]and make that testing more common.
[01:09:14.610]Okay, let's see.
[01:09:18.700]I often put peer's pictures on iPads
[01:09:20.357]for some of the children I work with that have autism.
[01:09:23.146]What are some other ideas to help them learn peers
[01:09:26.250]in the class if I think they are struggling with this?
[01:09:30.320]So I think using that Face It application could be good,
[01:09:34.520]and then also using pictures of peers in other contexts.
[01:09:38.080]I'm not just having the one picture of the peer
[01:09:40.161]'cause that might be hard for them to generalize
[01:09:43.630]to other contexts, but showing that peer
[01:09:45.628]with different facial expressions
[01:09:46.984]in different contexts, and then maybe play matching games
[01:09:52.146]with those pictures.
[01:09:55.013]Other things is kind of teaching the child
[01:09:57.230]what to look for in those pictures.
[01:09:58.780]So "Oh, we're trying to Johnny,
[01:10:00.497]"Johnny has short curly hair,"
[01:10:02.349]or "We're trying to find Susie who has long blonde hair."
[01:10:07.000]And giving the child those specific things
[01:10:09.270]to look at identify classmates.
[01:10:12.300]I'm gonna do one more
[01:10:13.300]just because there is a quick session that starts at 3:30
[01:10:16.760]for people who need to find out
[01:10:18.150]about the Thursday certificates.
[01:10:20.368]There's one in here that says,
[01:10:21.897]"At what age would you expect kids
[01:10:23.017]"to have a good handle on facial recognition?
[01:10:24.834]"And at what age would you start having concerns?"
[01:10:26.728]I think that that's important to know developmentally
[01:10:28.899]when is this really an issue?
[01:10:32.030]So at age two, a child generally
[01:10:34.870]has fairly decent facial recognition,
[01:10:38.640]at least of familiar people.
[01:10:41.880]Generally, you're not gonna be able to get a diagnosis
[01:10:44.131]of this until they're older but some of those big ones,
[01:10:46.970]you'll realize, if young children go up
[01:10:49.163]to mommies that aren't their mommy
[01:10:52.720]or walk by you without recognizing you.
[01:10:56.683]There are signs, I think I saw one in my nephew
[01:11:00.210]where he would always cry
[01:11:01.623]when his mommy or daddy wasn't holding him,
[01:11:04.430]and then my brother, his uncle held him
[01:11:07.700]who looks a lot like my brother, his dad,
[01:11:09.750]and he didn't have a problem with that.
[01:11:11.920]So I wonder if my nephew might have
[01:11:13.880]a little case of facial blindness.
[01:11:15.740]But generally, you're gonna start maybe seeing signs
[01:11:19.770]around two and three, but maybe not be able
[01:11:23.720]to really diagnose it until they're a fair amount older,
[01:11:27.770]maybe school age.
[01:11:39.641]All right, I'm going to stop the recording
[01:11:41.199]and then if anybody else had any other questions
[01:11:43.653]and don't need to go for the session
[01:11:45.950]about the extra, how do you get your certificate
[01:11:49.680]if you only attend on Thursday.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Do I Know you? The Connection Between autism and facial blindness.

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments