Science writer Sadie Dingfelder always knew she was different but never understood how or why until one day she mistook a stranger for her husband in a grocery store.
She had been teasing her husband for picking up generic peanut butter, but when she saw the confused look on his face she quickly realized it wasn’t her husband at all and darted away.
So began a journey of self-discovery at age 39 that would lead to new realizations about how her brain works and her writing a book about it, “Do I Know You? a Face Blind Reporter’s Journey Into the Science of Sight, Memory and Imagination. Dingfelder discussed the book and what she learned on WMNF WaveMakers with Janet & Tom.
Dingfelder, who grew up in Tampa as the daughter of Tampa City Council member John Dingfelder, knew that she had trouble remembering people. Not just their names, which is common. But remembering she’d ever met them. She quickly discovered that’s just not normal..
“Most human beings have a near photographic memory for faces,” Dingfelder said. “I just didn’t realize how much better everyone else was at face memory than me.”
The incident with her husband in the grocery store was one of thousands of similar encounters during her lifetime but, “that was the moment I first thought, this is not the kind of mistake normal people make.” Usually she would just “laugh if off and move forward.” But this time, maybe because she was approaching middle age and more reflective on her life, she decided to find out more.
What she discovered surprised her. Not only is face blindness a thing (prevalent to some degree among 20 percent of people), there’s been a lot of research on it dating back 70 years. And now, thanks to her own journey of discovering, she is part of that research as a subject of numerous neurological studies. And she found that some other ways she was different, including an inability to remember details from her past or see in three dimensions, are all related.
Hear the entire conversation by clicking the link below, going to the WaveMakers archives or by searching for WMNF WaveMakers wherever you listen to podcasts.
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