What's the opposite of pareidolia?

Quinn

Breathtakingly blasphemous.
Quinn
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Jan 6, 2002
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If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist? I mean, other than things like obliviousness, unawareness, cluelessness, etc?
 
devnull said:
I remember there is a rare condition where the person is unable to 'decode' and remember faces. I dont recall the name of it though.
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You may be thinking of prosopagnosia, whose name I can only remember because I often wonder whether it's possible to have a mild form of it.
 
Quinn said:
If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist? I mean, other than things like obliviousness, unawareness, cluelessness, etc?
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A pattern is not an object. The ability to find similarities in things that seem to be different is the ability to find patterns. So if Im correct, You can't be good at one and not at the other. Both are skill necessary to the other. You need to see the pattern AND NOT THE WRONG PATTERN to be good at seeing patterns, and you need to see the difference AND NOT THE WRONG DIFFERENCE to be good at seeing differences.
 
Rat said:
You may be thinking of prosopagnosia, whose name I can only remember because I often wonder whether it's possible to have a mild form of it.
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I was perusing a copy of People Magazine today while waiting for a haircut, and there was an article about an extended family with seven or eight members with prosopagnosia. Very interesting. And here is a fellow's story about it:

http://www.choisser.com/faceblind/

There is also Capgras syndrome, where a person recognizes people but thinks they are impostors.

~~ Paul
 
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There is a woman in australia who has it - apparently one day her husband forgot his key and knocked on the front door, and she answered it with 'can I help you?'

I have the opposite problem - I remember faces but fail to connect them to places/names/events. Im forever asking old acquaintances "where do I know you from then?"
 
Rat said:
You may be thinking of prosopagnosia, whose name I can only remember because I often wonder whether it's possible to have a mild form of it.
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My self diagnosis is that I have a moderate to severe case of it. The only quasi-medical person I have spoken to about it was a psychoanalyst. He wasn't to interested as it turned out my problems were all my mother's fault.

It is sort of balanced in my life by my wife's ability to seemingly remember the face of every face of every one she has ever met and a huge majority of the faces of people she has seen pictures of. The puzzlement of people trying to remember where they met her when she remembers them matches my own when I see my face in the mirror in the morning for the first time (NOTE -- exageration for the purpose of effect -- it's not quite that bad.) :o
 
Quinn said:
If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist? I mean, other than things like obliviousness, unawareness, cluelessness, etc?
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Dumb, I think works.

Seriously, the IQ tests I've seen have an awful lot of pattern-finding exercises. So by that measure, the less you can find them, the lower IQ you have.

Or perhaps this dumb or clueless term we're looking for is really on both ends. Not finding a pattern that is there, or finding a pattern that isn't.
 
Sometimes I look at faces and only see random shapes of clouds.
 
Quinn said:
If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist? I mean, other than things like obliviousness, unawareness, cluelessness, etc?
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A very interesting facet of this could very well be banner blindness: The ability to learn how to recognize something and then ignore it - without being consciously aware that you recognized and ignored it.

staunch said:
A pattern is not an object. The ability to find similarities in things that seem to be different is the ability to find patterns. So if Im correct, You can't be good at one and not at the other. Both are skill necessary to the other. You need to see the pattern AND NOT THE WRONG PATTERN to be good at seeing patterns, and you need to see the difference AND NOT THE WRONG DIFFERENCE to be good at seeing differences.
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You are dangerously close to emulating Creationists: Imposing a specific design where no such design is present.

How do you determine if a pattern is present? And what the heck is a "wrong pattern"?

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
There is also Capgras syndrome, where a person recognizes people but thinks they are impostors.
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Some alien abductees do this, too. They think people they know are really aliens. Cue: Cocoon.

....isn't that what Britney Spears was doing just recently, when she was hauled out of her bathroom?

devnull said:
There is a woman in australia who has it - apparently one day her husband forgot his key and knocked on the front door, and she answered it with 'can I help you?'

I have the opposite problem - I remember faces but fail to connect them to places/names/events. Im forever asking old acquaintances "where do I know you from then?"
Click to expand...

You know me. I'm your old friend.

Oh, by the way: You owe me $50.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
My self diagnosis is that I have a moderate to severe case of it. The only quasi-medical person I have spoken to about it was a psychoanalyst. He wasn't to interested as it turned out my problems were all my mother's fault.

It is sort of balanced in my life by my wife's ability to seemingly remember the face of every face of every one she has ever met and a huge majority of the faces of people she has seen pictures of. The puzzlement of people trying to remember where they met her when she remembers them matches my own when I see my face in the mirror in the morning for the first time (NOTE -- exageration for the purpose of effect -- it's not quite that bad.) :o
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Yes, that's about where I'm at, even down to having the girlfriend who knows names and faces for me. I didn't realize how bad I was until a newspaper did an article on it, wherein they had pictures of lots of celebrities with everything but the face cropped, which meant no clues from context or hair (of course, as they were celebrities, I didn't know half of them anyway). I really can fail to recognize someone if they significantly change their hair, and there are lots of other cues I use. If I see someone out of context, say someone from work in a non-work-related situation, it can briefly throw me until I can work out their normal context.

I also read an article about failure to distinguish people of different races, which implies, from the number of people who have this problem, that a lot of people rely primarily on cues other than face recognition alone. Not that all [insert ethnic type]s look the same, but that one differentiates people who look different in a different way, as it were, by different means. I wish I could remember where I'd seen it.
 
CFLarsen said:
A very interesting facet of this could very well be banner blindness: The ability to learn how to recognize something and then ignore it - without being consciously aware that you recognized and ignored it.



You are dangerously close to emulating Creationists: Imposing a specific design where no such design is present.

Pareidolia, is product of the mind .processes in general The tendency to organize into coherent patterns




How do you determine if a pattern is present? And what the heck is a "wrong pattern"?

If the relevant pattern is found to be present, the pattern recognition process is initiated.
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staunch said:
Pareidolia, is product of the mind .processes in general The tendency to organize into coherent patterns
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...what?

What the heck is a "coherent pattern"?

staunch said:
If the relevant pattern is found to be present, the pattern recognition process is initiated.
Click to expand...

...what?

How do you know if the "relevant pattern" is found to be present?

What the heck is a "relevant pattern"?

What the heck does "the pattern recognition process is initiated" mean?
 
CFLarsen said:
...what?

What the heck is a "coherent pattern"?



...what?

How do you know if the "relevant pattern" is found to be present?

What the heck is a "relevant pattern"?

What the heck does "the pattern recognition process is initiated" mean?
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Sorry. I don't know the name of the disease where all you do is ask questions. :blush:
 
Rat said:
Yes, that's about where I'm at, even down to having the girlfriend who knows names and faces for me. I didn't realize how bad I was until a newspaper did an article on it, wherein they had pictures of lots of celebrities with everything but the face cropped, which meant no clues from context or hair (of course, as they were celebrities, I didn't know half of them anyway). I really can fail to recognize someone if they significantly change their hair, and there are lots of other cues I use. If I see someone out of context, say someone from work in a non-work-related situation, it can briefly throw me until I can work out their normal context.

I also read an article about failure to distinguish people of different races, which implies, from the number of people who have this problem, that a lot of people rely primarily on cues other than face recognition alone. Not that all [insert ethnic type]s look the same, but that one differentiates people who look different in a different way, as it were, by different means. I wish I could remember where I'd seen it.
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Oh God. Famous people and movie stars. I have trouble telling one from another -- Tom Hanks vs Mel Gibson not for the all the dollars in the MDC, Britney Spears vs Paris Hilton, clueless -- no wait, the Paris Hilton is just down the street from the Eiffel Tower. :boxedin:
 
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Quinn said:
If pareidolia is the act of seeing significant patterns where they don't exist, is there a term for failing to see significant patterns where they do exist? I mean, other than things like obliviousness, unawareness, cluelessness, etc?
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I call it intoxication.
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Oh God. Famous people and movie stars. I have trouble telling one from another -- Tom Hanks vs Mel Gibson not for the all the dollars in the MDC, Britney Spears vs Paris Hilton, clueless -- no wait, the Paris Hilton is just down the street from the Eiffel Tower. :boxedin:
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Hey - What's the difference between Paris Hilton the celebrity and Paris Hilton the hotel?

Not everyone's been inside the Hotel...

:P
 
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