Prosopagnosia Researchers

People deeply involved in learning about face blindness

These people are working together, and working with face blind people, to learn more about our condition and make life better for us all.

One problem researchers have is that face blind people are relatively rare. Newspapers will not publish political polls unless hundreds have been surveyed because smaller numbers make statisticians cringe. But with face blindness, due to the small number of people, we can only dream of such numbers. For now we all have to make do with far less.

The more subjects who come forward, the more we can learn, and the more reliable data we will obtain about how we are different from people in the general population and different from one another. At this point we do not know what percent of us get a key trait system, or what percent of us are male and female, and many similar questions remain unanswered as well, because we just don't have the numbers of subjects we would like. So volunteering to help people such as those listed here is important:

• Bradley Duchaine - University College London (England) & Dartmouth College (New Hampshire)
  
• Bruno Rossion, University of Louvain, Belgium
• Galit Yovel - Tel Aviv University, Israel
• Joe DeGutis, Veterans Administration, Boston, Massachusetts
• Kalanit Grill-Spector, Stanford University, California
• Ken Nakayama - Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Kirsten Dalrymple, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
• Mark Williams - Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• Marlene Behrmann - Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Martin Eimer, Birkbeck College, London, England
• Morris Moscovitch - University of Toronto, Ontario
• Noam Sagiv - Brunel University, Uxbridge, England
• Richard Cook, City University London, England
• Romina Palermo, University of Western Australia, Perth
• Sarah Bate, Bournemouth University, England
• Thomas and Martina Gruter - Munster University, Germany

Thanks to Brad Duchaine who assisted with compiling this list.

These people can get nowhere with learning about the face blind, without our help. Visit their web pages (by clicking on their names) for information about the interests of each and how to contact them. (If the researcher's lab has a web page in addition to that of the researcher, clicking on the university's name will give you that page.)

Do not be concerned about confidentiality if you work with a reputable researcher, such as one affiliated with a major university. It is standard practice in their field to not reveal your identity, though the results of what they find about you may of course be made publicly available in detail. Adding to the body of human knowledge is why research is done.

Most researchers do not have funding to pay you more than a token payment, if even that. Your participation will be far more valuable than any sum a researcher gives you in any event, because face blind people are so rare. What a cash-strapped researcher can provide to you, at little or no cost to him, is information about you, which is valuable to you. This arrangement can produce a win-win situation for both of you.

If you help a researcher, get his agreement in advance to share with you what he finds out about you. Also, if his testing reveals deficits and you have worked with him extensively, it is not unreasonable to ask that he provide you with a short written diagnosis signed by an appropriate professional in his department. Information should be made available to you at no charge and within a few months from when you were tested. If any researcher listed here should renege on this obligation (i.e., test you and run), or subject you to a bait and switch routine (promise certain testing to get you there but then test you on something else), contact me, and recommendation here of that researcher may be withdrawn.

Go back to Getting Diagnosed (Tested) for Face Blindness.

Text of this page last revised November 11, 2014.