UMNews is highlighting the work of Professor Al Yonas, Institute of Child Development, and the Yonas Lab in a story on prosopagnosia, or “face blindness”. Titled “Facing a difficult condition,” the story describes the lab’s research on identifying children with the condition, which is a neurological disorder that inhibits the ability to remember faces. It occurs in 1 to 2 percent of the population.
Yonas and his research assistants have been developing a number of tests for face blindness since 2008, with the goal of making more people aware of face blindness. “A lot of people don’t know they have this condition,” Yonas says in the story. “They go through their life with the disability and they don’t know anything is wrong.” And often children are misdiagnosed with other cognitive disabilities.

“Children with developmental prosopagnosia really are facing a gigantic obstacle,” says Sherryse Corrow, a doctoral student working in the lab. “You don’t know your father from a different man, your mother from a different woman. So everyone is essentially a stranger.”
See a video below, which features Yonas, Corrow, and research work in the lab: