How Non-Face Recognition Methods Work in Practice How We Tell
People Apart As we discussed in the previous chapter, every
person with face blindness comes up with his personal formula
for remembering people. Voice, essences, clothes, hair, and
beards are the most commonly reported. Some people may develop a
scheme where they have one or more of these be their primary way
of identifying people - their "key traits" - with the others
applied as needed to assist. Other people never develop a
precise system, but use all of the things available with a
scheme that could characterized as "vague" at best. Whichever be
the case, we all undoubtedly mix the different ways of telling
people apart to some degree. If someone's hair, or voice, or
clothes are particularly unique, for example, we are likely to
remember that. For me, and for some face blind people I've met
(but not for others), some ways of remembering people work much
better than others. (These are the "key traits" discussed in the
last chapter.) In my case, I