Ms Judith Lowes

I am undertaking a PhD investigating developmental prosopagnosia (also known as face blindness) in children and adults. I am interested in how the patterns of face recognition difficulties may be similar or different across individuals and lifespan stages and also in which tests and measures best classify this interesting neurodevelopmental condition. If you, or someone you know has trouble recognising faces please get in touch. My research is funded by ESRC through the SGSSS and my supervisors are Professor Peter Hancock and Dr Anna Bobak.

My PhD is investigating developmental prosopagnosia (face blindness) in children and adults taking a lifespan approach. My current areas of research are:

1. Where precisely in the face processing system do difficulties occur?

I use a theoretically-informed test battery to try to develop a better understanding of precisely where in the face processing system difficulties occurring at an individual level. I am also fascinated by the the richness of people's lived experience of prosopagnosia and believe that these insights can inform directions for future research and shed valuable light into whether there may be sub types of developmental prosopagnosia.

2. Which tests and measures are most useful for classifying developmental prosopagnosia? My research also investigates the role of different speed-accuracy trade offs and the extent to which our own subjective rating of our face recognition ability can predict performance on objective face processing tests.

3. What helps people with developmental prosopagnosia? I am interested in the possibilities offered by rehabilitation training, strategies that can be developed and also environmental and systemic accommodations, including raising awareness of prosopagnosia.

I am always keen to hear from anyone who thinks they, or their child, may have difficulty with face recognition. Please feel free to contact me by email judith.lowes @ stir.ac.uk