The other day my new friend waved at me and went over to me. He said: “Have we met before?” It happened a lot-he finds it hard to remember new people’s faces. “Anyone I’ve spoken to once or twice I do forget quite soon,” he says. “If I meet someone new, I’ll make a point of following them on Facebook so their faces become impressive in my memory somehow.” Face blindness, or prosopagnosia, is a confusing condition that can make us believe we recognize people we’ve never met or fail to recognize those we have.
For some people with face blindness, it may be the poor ability to see. “Because they’re seeing faces a little bit differently to everybody else, it doesn’t allow them to pick up on the visual message that most of us use to recognize different people.” says John Towler, lecturer in psychology at Swansea University. They can have problems with the whole face at first sight, and will focus on a particular detail to remember people by-the eyebrows, the mouth for example.
For other people with the condition, it may be more of a memory problem. “Clearly, if the ability to see is poor, then memory is going to be poor and the two things often affect each other,” says Towler. “But for some people, it’s mainly one or the other.”
The result is that both types of people are unable to recognize familiar faces. Neither type would know which face was being shown to them-the first type because they can’t see it perfectly enough, and the second type because they can’t remember it.
It’s less clear what causes face blindness in people. Studies have suggested that there are unusual structural and functional signs in the brain’s wiring, according to Towler, but there is no agreement on the exact cause. For this reason, the line between having developmental(发育性)prosopagnosia and being simply “bad” with faces can be unclear. One of the things about any kind of ability is that humans are not all the same.
32. Why does the writer mention his new friend?
A.To introduce the topic. | B.To share a story. |
C.To give an opinion. | D.To make a comparison. |
33. Which of the following is closest in meaning to the underlined part in paragraph 2?
A.lift. | B.forget. | C.notice. | D.watch. |
34. According to John Towler, people with prosopagnosia ________.
A.can’t remember anything |
B.have something unusual in their brains |
C.can recognize people by the mouth only |
D.are both poor at memory and the ability to see |
35. What can we infer from the last paragraph?
A.Humans share no similarities in ability. |
B.The cause of face blindness is unknown at all. |
C.Scientists are still working to find the unusual signs. |
D.It’s hard to tell prosopagnosia from being “bad” with faces. |