Mild face blindness or just really poor memory?

[theporgsnest]

I'm a strongly visual learner and have always considered myself to remember names better than faces, which is half true, but it wasn't until I saw a post on tumblr the other that was like 'when you forget who some people look like when you haven't seen them for a while but remember every detail of your favorite character in a show and can describe it perfectly' that I thought things over a bit more.
I'm not entirely sure if I have face blindness (prosopagnosia) but is this a thing commonly linked to ASD and does anyone else here struggle with this?
-Basically don't ever ask to me 'age' somebody be they young or old, man or woman.
- I struggle to pick somebody I know- even family I live with - out of a crowd.
- I've met someone once, twice, and then they've greeted me the next time we've met and I panic for a second because I have no idea who they are. (Sometimes it clicks after a minute, sometimes not, in which case I just awkwardly go along because how can I mention I don't know them??)
- However like the post I saw, any actors of characters I've been a fan of often have striking or unusual features...hmmm

 

[Fino]

If I don't know someone very well and then see them somewhere other than where I typically see them, I won't recognize them. I once saw a classmate outside of class, thought she was a stranger, and she was horrified!

 

[Pats]

Yes, I don't usually know someone out of the normal setting. I've had lots of people come up and start talking to me and I'm like, "ummmmmm" then they realize I don't know who they are and tell me. Or someone back in the right setting will say they tried to speak to me at such and such. "Oh - oops".
Also unable to pick people out of crowds - including family. I always dreaded having to pick my kids up after an event and usually would just wait for them to find me.

 

[Tessie]

Yep. While trying to be sociable at a family gathering of my in-laws, I was consciously attempting to look at people, in the eye, and say hello. When I got to two people I didn't recognize, I introduced myself. At first I was so pleased that I got up the courage and followed through until the awkward silence and strange return looks and then it dawned on me who they were. I was, of course, horrified.

 

[tlc]

People come up to me often who know me from the past, and I don't recognize them at all. They make themselves known and it still doesn't totally connect who they are, but I run with it.

I couldn't re-create a face, or identify features of someone's face. Even faces of people I see a lot or know well. I couldn't say their eyes look like this, or their nose looks like this.... I put it all together somehow and just know, like an overall fuzzy form.

 

[Autistamatic]

Prosopagnosia is not uncommon amongst autistics. The variety that @Pats describes - contextual prosopagnosia - in particular. I've described before how I have walked past colleagues in a shop whom I was talking to at work less than an hour previously. Because it's a public setting and out of context, I don't recognise their faces.
There is speculation as to whether prosopagnosia in autistics is separate from the wider phenomenon and may be a direct consequence of the tendency many of us have not to make eye contact nor put much significance in faces and possibly linked to our common need to categorise. I'm on the fence on that one.

 

[Progster]

Yes, I struggle with this, especially contextual prosopagnosia. I first became aware of this when a friend at school who I saw every day cut her hair short and them came up to say 'hi', but I didn't recognise her and sat there wondering why this apparent stranger was saying 'hi' to me! I remember people by their hair style or their coat or the car they drive, but not their face. I also struggle to visualise their face when I think of them, too.

 

[Adora]

There is speculation as to whether prosopagnosia in autistics is separate from the wider phenomenon and may be a direct consequence of the tendency many of us have not to make eye contact

My husband claims this same thing,he believes the reason why I have issues with recognising some peoples faces is because I don’t make eye contact with them.

Not sure if it’s just that but I definitely have had some embarrassing moments where It took me a few moments to recognise someone I have known for ages.

 

[Autistamatic]

My husband claims this same thing,he believes the reason why I have issues with recognising some peoples faces is because I don’t make eye contact with them.

Not sure if it’s just that but I definitely have had some embarrassing moments where It took me a few moments to recognise someone I have known for ages.

I won't say it doesn't sound plausible, but although I don't particularly like eye contact I have always made efforts to do so as part of the masking process. It strikes me as another one of those lazy answers that just "blames it on the autism" to avoid further investigation.

 

[Pats]

Like @Autistamatic I'm not so sure it's the 'not making eye contact' thing either. For one - I do make eye contact. I learned to do that when I was in speech therapy. But, then I'm only making eye contact and not really paying attention to the rest of the face. For this reason, I never notice whether or not you have cut your beard or colored your hair until I start looking at photos. Like, one of my family Christmas's with my kids everyone kept asking my oldest son if he had gone Amish and I didn't know why they were saying that until I was looking at photos later and realized he had a beard but no mustache.

 

[Katleya]

Maybe we're so focused on making eye contact that this is all our brain can focus on --making eye contact, and forget about the rest of the features. "Look them in the eye. No, both eyes. No, not for so long, now you're staring. Quit staring. It's been a minute, look them in the eye again. Am I squinting? Oh, a fly!"
I'm half kidding. I have considered that maybe prosopagnosia had to do with me not making eye contact, but then I realized 2 things: there are people I can comfortably look in the eye (my parents or boyfriend, for example), whom I still don't recognize, and even after forcing myself to look other people in the eye more, nothing has changed.
I will recognize people based on context, and while I have mentally stored lists of features for most people I know, it usually takes me way too much time to retrieve said list and match it to the person greeting me to return their greeting in a natural way. So now I just say hello back, and hope that the list-matching tasks runs fast enough in the back of my mind for me not to say something wrong. It's not like I use people's name much when I talk to them anyway, so usually it goes unnoticed, for the most part.
I didn't know this was a thing until I casually mentioned it in a conversation 7 years ago, so I'd never realized other people weren't like that, and I was amazed at how many other people seemed to process that information so much faster than I did. And even to this day, I still realize new things about prosopagnosia, mostly from discussing people who don't have it and confronting our experiences. I'd never realized until 2 months ago, when someone asked me about recreating familiar people in my memories or dreams, that I could recreate them from the feet up to the neck, and then they had a blurry-ish head with very clearly defined hair. Eh, at least they're not Sleepy Hollow, I guess. But it had never occurred to me because I had never tried to recreate memories in my mind, and there are rarely people in my dreams, including dreams about given people. They're just assumed to be there, mentioned, and hanging out in a different room, as far as dreams are concerned, which wasn't particularly striking since this is how it mostly is in real life anyway.

One thing I don't think we've mentioned here in past prosopagnosia posts (but I might have missed some), is recognizing our own selves on pictures. It takes me a fraction of seconds to understand that I am, indeed, looking at myself, followed by a very systematic "Oh, so this is was I look like?"

 

[Fino]

I would venture to guess that it's more a function of memory than perception.

I know people who don't remember their license plate number or anyone else's. What name should that have?

Or the people who can't remember what we talked about in the previous piano lessons?

Or the people who play a small part of the music then can't remember it five seconds later?

And by "the people," I mean pretty much everyone.

As with most of what makes a person autistic, perhaps it's just different wiring.

 

[Tony Ramirez]

I am good with faces but bad with names. I posted this topic earlier saying that I quite often get names mixed up but can remember faces. The wired thing is that most people I meet can remember my name.

 

[Pats]

Maybe we're so focused on making eye contact that this is all our brain can focus on --making eye contact, and forget about the rest of the features. "Look them in the eye. No, both eyes. No, not for so long, now you're staring. Quit staring. It's been a minute, look them in the eye again. Am I squinting? Oh, a fly!"
I'm half kidding. I have considered that maybe prosopagnosia had to do with me not making eye contact, but then I realized 2 things: there are people I can comfortably look in the eye (my parents or boyfriend, for example), whom I still don't recognize, and even after forcing myself to look other people in the eye more, nothing has changed.
I will recognize people based on context, and while I have mentally stored lists of features for most people I know, it usually takes me way too much time to retrieve said list and match it to the person greeting me to return their greeting in a natural way. So now I just say hello back, and hope that the list-matching tasks runs fast enough in the back of my mind for me not to say something wrong. It's not like I use people's name much when I talk to them anyway, so usually it goes unnoticed, for the most part.
I didn't know this was a thing until I casually mentioned it in a conversation 7 years ago, so I'd never realized other people weren't like that, and I was amazed at how many other people seemed to process that information so much faster than I did. And even to this day, I still realize new things about prosopagnosia, mostly from discussing people who don't have it and confronting our experiences. I'd never realized until 2 months ago, when someone asked me about recreating familiar people in my memories or dreams, that I could recreate them from the feet up to the neck, and then they had a blurry-ish head with very clearly defined hair. Eh, at least they're not Sleepy Hollow, I guess. But it had never occurred to me because I had never tried to recreate memories in my mind, and there are rarely people in my dreams, including dreams about given people. They're just assumed to be there, mentioned, and hanging out in a different room, as far as dreams are concerned, which wasn't particularly striking since this is how it mostly is in real life anyway.

One thing I don't think we've mentioned here in past prosopagnosia posts (but I might have missed some), is recognizing our own selves on pictures. It takes me a fraction of seconds to understand that I am, indeed, looking at myself, followed by a very systematic "Oh, so this is was I look like?"

I actually was looking at my daughter in law's pictures once and pointed and asked who this person was and it was me. lol No, wasn't a blurry picture, just didn't recognize myself. And your first paragraph is completely accurate. (and the daydreaming /dreaming thing - they're just known to be there).

 

[Pats]

I would venture to guess that it's more a function of memory than perception.

I know people who don't remember their license plate number or anyone else's. What name should that have?

Or the people who can't remember what we talked about in the previous piano lessons?

Or the people who play a small part of the music then can't remember it five seconds later?

And by "the people," I mean pretty much everyone.

As with most of what makes a person autistic, perhaps it's just different wiring.

Interesting concept and possibly in some cases, but like when I didn't notice my son's beard until looking at pictures was not memory - I just didn't see it.

 

[Fino]

Interesting concept and possibly in some cases, but like when I didn't notice my son's beard until looking at pictures was not memory - I just didn't see it.

And not seeing the beard would be what would cause you to not recognize him when you see him again? Because this second time you would perceive the beard, which would make him too different from the first time you saw him?

Or would you not perceive the beard again? And still not recognize him?

This made my head hurt.

 

[Autistamatic]

It's definitely not a memory thing in my case.

I feel it's important to recognise that the majority of us are hard wired to respond to faces and is one of the reasons some people see faces in everything. Those people who see Jesus on a piece of toast or a potato doppelganger of Elvis likely aren't the nutjobs they are made out to be, they're just experiencing the polar opposite of prosopagnosia.

 

[Fino]

Maybe it has some relation to pattern recognition?
People's inability to find patterns, primarily in music, has always surprised me.
I don't know what beyond that, just something to do with patterns.

 

[Autistamatic]

That's the odd thing @Fino - faces are a very specific thing with specialised neural structures devoted to them. My pattern recognition is highly accurate and intuitive and is now my day job. I'm paid to recognise and predict business events using both stats and qualitative analysis, and to construct systems to recognise them even better. I spot patterns in music, in languages, in behaviour and in story telling tropes. I recognise people instantly by their voices, even when they're disguising their voice. When I'm downstairs at work I can tell who is about to come down the stairs by the rhythm and weight of their footsteps above me, yet put a face in the wrong place and I'm scuppered.

 

[Pats]

And not seeing the beard would be what would cause you to not recognize him when you see him again? Because this second time you would perceive the beard, which would make him too different from the first time you saw him?

Or would you not perceive the beard again? And still not recognize him?

This made my head hurt.

Beard or no beard wouldn't matter - I never notice day to day. He had a beard for a long time and one day my daughter in law walked in exclaiming, "You shaved your beard!" I would never had noticed. (I actually don't like that about myself because I'm afraid the other person might feel hurt that I didn't notice).