Published on 12, July, 2020
Prosopagnosia , or face blindness. I suffer from it and have done so for as long as I can remember. Does anyone else here have similar problems?
It's very embarrassing when someone greets me and I have no idea who they are or where do I know them from. Related to this problem is name blindness where I find it very very difficult to remember people's names.
Recently I was greeted by a man in a park and I struggled badly to remember who he was. I mostly remember people from their voices and other visual clues such what they wear, where they usually sit. He turned out to be a colleague from a health and fitness course I recently attended.
How common is it for autistics to suffer from prosopagnosia ?
I read somewhere that face-blindness happens because we don't process faces with a special part of our brains like NTs do, we just process them as objects. They, apparently, have special software just for faces!
I tried an interesting experiment with myself once. I tried to get a mental picture of a face that I would definitely recognise, in this case my mother's, and I could not do it. I have a hazy notion of the 'shape of my mother' as well as some bits and pieces, such as knowing what shape her mouth is when she smiles, but I can't put them together to make a photo in my head.
There are many faces that I would not recognise - I failed to recognise my old boss, who I sat 6 feet away from for almost 2 years, coming into the building the other day. However, when I worked with him, he always wore a checked shirt and chinos, and had thinning black hair. Now he has gone grey and a change of role means he's in a smart suit most days .... and that was enough to throw me to the extent that I genuinely didn't know who he was when he greeted me.
I really thought I was the only person who has this for years and years, and anyone I told about it thought it incredibly strange and fascinating. I guess that was because I hadn't met any (?) autistics until recently. When I was diagnosed (AS) I found that many of the odd traits and problems that I have are related, but until then I had no idea! It's kind of nice to know I am not alone after all.