This is an interactive version of the Exposure Based Face Memory Test.
Introduction: The human brain has a special module that is used to recognize faces. People with prosopagnosia, also known as “face blindness”, have difficulty remembering faces. Every time they see a face it looks to them like a face they have never seen before and such people have to use other information such as hair, voice, and body to recognize others. The Exposure Based Face Memory Test was developed as an open source measure of face memory and was designed with a procedure that is both closer to the demands on face memory experienced in every day life, and minimizes administration time.
Procedure: In this test you will be shown a long series of faces. For each face you must say if you have been shown that person before, or if this is a new face you have not been shown yet. It should take 2-5 minutes to complete. This test can only be taken once. It is spoiled if you have seen any of the faces before. So if want accurate results, make sure to take it seriously the first time.
Participation: You use of this assessment should be for educational or entertainment purposes only. This is not psychological advice of any kind. Additionally, your responses to this questionnaire will be anonymously saved and possibly used for research or otherwise distributed.
This is a quick test which will give you some sense of whether you have or do not have face-blindness. I scored better than just 16.5% of people who have taken the test, which does not qualify as prosopagnosia, though I do have moderate-significant face-blindness. One aspect of this condition not yet studied, far as I know, is I sometimes see the faces of people I should recognize as distorted, sometimes rather weirdly so, sometimes just a bit weirdly; this happens just before I fully recognize them by voice or some other prompt. If you have face-blindness it is probably a good idea to tell people you meet about it. Some people react with surprise and confusion but many have heard of prosopagnosia and appreciate getting the information. Human faces form a semiotic ‘language’ which people with excellent face-recognition probably greatly enjoy. Easily recognizing/ remembering faces facilitates building social relationships. Not easily recognizing faces causes a delay in fully receiving into your mind the social presence of another person, thus making it more difficult to build social relationships. I have probably spent more time thinking about language and interpersonal communications than most people because I largely remember people initially or click with them through their speech idiosyncrasies more than by remembering their faces. ABN
Shirley deserves great credit for his video and David deserves great credit for his years of research which made that video possible. Both of them are exhibiting admirable bravery. ABN
Dozens of federal agents working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security probed multiple locations in Lewiston on Tuesday that have been associated with Somali fraud allegations and gun theft charges.
Those locations included sites linked to Gateway Community Services CEO Abdullahi Ali and his former deputies State Rep. Deqa Dhalac (D-South Portland) and Rep. Yusuf Yusuf (D-Portland), as well as a 210 Blake St. property owned by Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services (MEIRS) founder Rilwan Osman.
A spokesperson from HSI in Portland declined to elaborate on why the agency had selected those addresses for aggressive audit visits.
Gateway Community Services CEO Abdullahi Ali and Office of New Americans Policy Analyst Eklhas Ahmed appear with Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D)
HSI is actively conducting audits of businesses in Maine to protect America from fraud & ensure businesses only employ legal workers. Hiring unauthorized workers risks severe penalties & undermines national security.
The best way to protect your business is by following the law.
Either way, not fit for public office or any position of trust.
As this sort of news keeps rolling in, remember Washington, DC is many orders of magnitude worse and so non-transparent it is a blackhole at the center of our nation.
The other way to look at this news is the public is now widely aware and angry.
Over 100 million watched Nick Shirley’s video and even the FBI responded.
Nick’s video may have been encouraged or promoted by White Hats in government or it may have simply come at the right time. I hope it will not be used as a distraction to keep us from catching much bigger fish.
What we want is for all of the corruption to be exposed and destroyed and, so far, this is a good beginning. ABN
A study conducted at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä showed that a genetic predisposition for higher muscle strength predicts a longer lifespan and a lower risk for developing common diseases. This is the most comprehensive international study to date on hereditary muscle strength and its relationship to morbidity. The genome and health data of more than 340,000 Finns was used in the research.
This essay by Daniel Chandler is good introduction to semiotics and a good way to help readers better understand how we are using the term on this site. I highly recommend the essay for anyone interested in thought, culture, language, or psychology. But it will be especially useful for Buddhists because having some idea of what semiotics is all about can be a great help in understanding many of the teachings of the Buddha. The deep significance of fundamental Buddhist concepts like emptiness and dependent origination may become clearer and more useful when viewed from a semiotic point of view.
Buddhists might also take note that semiotics is difficult to define and/or get a grasp of and in this resembles some of the more abstract or philosophical teachings of the Buddhist tradition, particularly the work of Nagarjuna. Semiotics is the study of meaning, how we communicate it and what it is. Buddhism, one might say, is the study of how meaning pertains to the self, or the illusion of the self, and how our perceptions of the world around us are built out of a welter of ever-changing codependent meanings–semiotics.
We use the term semiotics on this site because it greatly facilitates our discussions of FIML practice. Terms like semiotics, emptiness, dependent origination, and so on were not created to make subjects obscure but rather to clarify them.
Can you look at someone’s face and know what they’re feeling? Does everyone experience happiness, sadness and anxiety the same way? What are emotions anyway? For the past 25 years, psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett has mapped facial expressions, scanned brains and analyzed hundreds of physiology studies to understand what emotions really are. She shares the results of her exhaustive research — and explains how we may have more control over our emotions than we think.
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This talk is a very good background for FIML practice, which is based on acknowledging that interpersonal emotions and interpretations are fundamentally ambiguous and must be investigated often to achieve good communication. ABN
In just two days, Americans may start noticing a change to the labels on their meat and egg products as a new rule takes effect.
In March 2024, Tom Vilsack, USDA secretary at the time, announced the finalization of a rule that will require that ‘Product of USA’ food labels only be used on products derived from animals that were born, raised and slaughtered within the US.
The new rule is set to take effect January 1, 2026 and will apply to meat, poultry and egg products.
The IRS has now confirmed Gavin Newsom is running what looks like a straight-up criminal operation.
Spencer Pratt sat down with IRS criminal investigators after discovering that $800 MILLION raised through “Fire Aid” for Pacific Palisades and Los Angeles fire victims never reached a single victim. Not one dollar.
American Buddhist Net 