Face blindness’ has increased over the Covid pandemic warns study – what is it? Signs

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Symptoms of a rare neurological condition have been found among large numbers of people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A study published in Nature revealed that facemasks used to prevent Covid transmission cause a lot of people to exhibit signs of face blindness.

The study of nearly 500 people saw that 13 percent of them had impaired ability to recognise even familiar faces when the mouth and nose were concealed by a mask.

Face blindness, also known as prosopagnosia, can be present in a person from birth or can result from a brain injury or stroke.

Doctor Marianne Trent, Clinical Psychologist and founder of Good Thinking Psychological Services, explains that the condition is rare to encounter in a clinical context.

Studies suggest that potentially one in 50 people suffers from some degree of face blindness, although it rarely gets diagnosed.

“Many people will never realise that they are experiencing something different than the other 49 people!”

“If someone with the condition sees someone out of context, e.g. they’re not wearing a uniform or they’re with different people it can take a while to realise who this person is coming up to them, using their name and chatting animatedly to them!

“ To the sufferer it can feel like a stranger has suddenly accosted them.

“Gradually accents, or topics of conversation may lead them to join up the dots and realise who they are speaking to.”

Michelle is one such person who did not realise she saw the world differently until she was in her 20s.

She said: “People who I spent my entire childhood with at school got in touch via Facebook, and I could not recognise or place their faces.

“I met my now husband at the age of 25 and watching films was a big part of our dating years; however, I always struggled to recognise well-known actors and link them back to other roles.

“In later years, I have had awful, painful moments of really trying to wrack my brains to identify people who I have bumped into in person and spoken to me like long-lost friends – people who it turns out I have had extensive conversations with, collaborated with professionally or even been employed alongside.”

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Doctor Trent explains that people with face blindness often develop memory tricks to get around the condition.

This might be remembering how a person dresses, or a distinguishing feature like an accessory or haircut.

With current mask regulations, some of these memory tricks can become disrupted.

Doctor Trent said: “If people have been using ‘mouth size’, lipstick shade, or a gold tooth as identifying features then they might feel completely lost!

“It doesn’t help that many people remove their glasses when wearing masks because of the fogging up of specs and so again a key identifying factor of glasses frame and size would be lost.”

Face blindness can be a source of great social anxiety, both from not being able to make the mental connections needed to recognise people and the fear of offending people if they realise.

Michelle explained: “Luckily, I run my company with my husband who is very good at recognising the signs that I do not know who someone is.

“He will subtly ‘plant’ information into conversation to help me try and call that person to memory – saying things like: ‘Hello [person’s name]. It’s been so long since we spoke at your online summit.’

“He knows I need that help and has saved me more times than I can count.”

Like with many conditions, face blindness has a variable scale of severity.

In mild cases a person comfortably identifies people they know but struggle to learn new faces as quickly as other people.

More severe cases of the condition can leave a person unable to recognise close family members or their own reflection in a mirror.

Doctor Trent said: “Psychology undergraduates often study it, so in the late 90s I first heard about a fascinating case study of a chap who couldn’t recognise his own wife’s face in a crowd but could recognise and name each one of his herd of cow’s faces!”

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