Effects of neurological damage

Both conditions get defined as a loss of sight — the one thing neither is. Visual agnosia is not blindness: vision is normal and the object is seen, but recognising what it is fails. Prosopagnosia is not failing to see faces: the face is seen clearly, but knowing whose it is fails. Always add "even though vision is normal" — it is worth a mark.

Asked for two impacts of pre-frontal damage, many give one twice — "impulsive" then "acts without thinking" — which scores once. Choose two from different rows: planning breaks down (a meal cooked in the wrong order) and emotional control weakens (irritability or mood swings). Say whether each is a cognition or a behaviour, since the spec asks for both.

Asked for the difference between visual agnosia and prosopagnosia, most write two definitions; the difference is only implied, worth one mark. The second needs a connective: visual agnosia is difficulty recognising objects by sight, whereas prosopagnosia is confined to familiar faces, so someone with it still identifies a cup or keys.

Prosopagnosia is easily confused with a general memory problem, but they differ. Someone with prosopagnosia knows the person by voice at once — memory for them is intact — while the face draws a blank. A memory problem is the opposite: the person cannot be recalled by any cue. Recognition by voice rules a memory problem out and points to a face-specific failure.

The pre-frontal cortex is the front-most part of the frontal lobe, not the whole lobe. The frontal lobe also controls voluntary movement, so treating them as the same wrongly predicts movement problems. Pre-frontal damage leaves movement, language and memory intact and changes planning, decisions, impulse control and emotion.

Command words are precise. "State one symptom" wants a single feature, not the full definition. A candidate asked for one symptom of prosopagnosia who writes "the inability to recognise familiar faces" has given the definition and can lose the mark. Give a symptom: walks past a close relative, or cannot recognise their own photograph.

Two pictures mislead. First, one region rarely gives one neat symptom — pre-frontal damage shows several impacts at once — so a category describes a pattern, not a guarantee, and a necessary region need not be the sole cause. Second, these are the opposite of blindness: seeing works, meaning does not — a prosopagnosic describes their own photo yet cannot say who it is.