Facial Recognition

http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/facetests/

I took this test recently and I scored in the 28th percentile for facial recognition (I remembered 11 of 20 faces), while my object recognition was 86 percentile (19 of 20 objects), and verbal recognition was 84 percentile (11 of 12 names). Unfortunately, I am quite sure I remembered the faces by memorizing how exactly that face was placed on the page, and the expression I remembered rather than the face itself.

Recently, I've been really proud of myself for meeting so many people and "remembering" so many names and faces. I actually felt confident that I had actually overcome my problems with names and faces. A few days ago, one of my classmates who I have already met and spoken with several times already got a haircut... and upon meeting him the next time, I promptly stuck out my hand and re-introduced myself. He looked confused, and said "but I just talked to you a couple hours ago. I just got a haircut..." I've also been having trouble with our recent outing to the lake because people began to put their hair up, or not wear makeup, or any number of changes that are completely throwing me off.

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2006/06/14/when_faces_have_no_name/?page=2

Learning about prosopagnosics in cognitive psychology, I was sure that I was not, since I easily identify faces as such. But the article above hypothesizes that problems in facial identity may be more widespread than we think. It really shocks me about how much I go through to try to remember enough about a person so that I'll identify them again the next time. When it was at interviews and I knew I'd only see the interviewer once, I would simply remember what they were wearing. Since it is classmates, I've been taking note of hairstyles and body build and general expressions that people wear around.