Brain & Prosopagnosia, 5

Face blindness in children may be overlooked. Often an adult may put it down to a child just appearing shy or slightly off—never suspecting this is due to their inability to recognized faces. These children may also have a hard time making friends, as they may not even recognize their classmates, who often assume the other child is proud or stuck up. Interestingly, a child with prosopagnosia may make friends with children who have very clear, distinguishing features or skin color. Prosopagnosia may interfere with a child being able to follow the story line or plots of television shows and movies, as they have trouble recognizing the different characters. They tend to gravitate towards cartoons, in which they have simple but well-defined characteristics, and tend to wear the same clothes, and may be strikingly different in color or ethnicity. In addition, they may even have a hard time telling family members apart, or recognizing people out of context (e.g., a teacher at a concert, a coach in a grocery store, the mail man at a ball game or even the “self” in a group photograph).