Faceblindness?

Oh yes, I am terrible for this. People who I see out of context I am likely to blank completely. Anyone who changes their hair, or the kind of thing they habitually wear, same, I wouldn't register it was them.

Like you, I rely heavily on indications from the other person that they know who I am, then have to hope that when they start talking, they give themselves away by mentioning people or something that connects them to a certain place. The best one I ever had was a bloke in a pub giving me the very obvious "why are you not acknowledging me" look, who did, to be fair, look vaguely familiar. The only thing that came into my mind was an association with bikes (I am a biker). In the end I got so frustrated, I went up to his table, explained my disastrous facial recognition skills, and asked him who he was. He looked at me with such amazement, then said "this morning???? you spent 3 hrs in my office having a meeting with me!!". I recalled a big fat zero about his face, despite having looked at him for 3hr straight, the only thing that stuck was as I walked in, I saw a crash helmet on a cabinet and said oh, you're a biker too!

It's a bit of a nightmare for film watching too. If a new character who is say a middle-aged bloke with dark hair is introduced in a scene, then in another scene a few minutes later another middle aged bloke with dark hair walks in, I often don't know if it's the same one or another new character, and have to ask my better half. He's used to this now, so doesn't get annoyed with me!

I have done some interesting experiments on myself with this. I can recognize my mother, but I can't call up a picture of her in my head. So I can't really say I know exactly what she looks like. Likewise my own face, I know it's me when it's reflected back in the mirror, but I have no real concept of what I look like, and I can't call up an image of my own face either, which is pretty weird really.

It's called prosopagnosia, by the way, and it is apparently more common in people with ASD than in the general population.

I saw an interesting article once which compared the way people with the condition looked at a photo which had 2 people in it, one facing the camera and one facing away. The researchers used eye following software to see where people looked when shown the image. The "normal" all looked at the face of the person facing the camera, then at the back of the head of the facing away person, then did a rough scan of the background. People like us just looked at the middle of the photo, then did a quick scan around. The faces didn't warrant any special processing. Plastic's comments are actually pretty close to their findings. Other people have special software, just for faces, that is quite specialized. We just use what we have for "general objects" which is not specialized at all ..... so it's just another thing, and one we forget quite quickly at that!

I'd never tried calling up pictures of faces in my head before today, but you're right; it is extremely hard. I don't feel sure I have it right at all. I seem to be able to in dreams, but a lot of weird stuff gets passed off as normal in dreams that blatantly isn't, so I'm not sure how trustworthy my brain is in that situation. 

I think when I first tried to do that was when I realised quite how big a problem I had! My not being able to form an image of what I look like has even extended to not recognising myself in photos. 

It's fascinating that you can do it in your dreams though. I definitely can't, quite the opposite in fact. What I get is for example there will be "my sister" in the dream, she will sound like my sister, and all of the people in the dream will relate to her as my sister. BUT she will look like someone else entirely, often not even anyone I know. I am aware that the sister character has the wrong face on, but it's like my brain realises it can't get her face right so just stops bothering and puts completely random faces on instead!

I also have people speaking languages in my dreams that I know full well they can't speak in real life, but that's another story .....

I think when I first tried to do that was when I realised quite how big a problem I had! My not being able to form an image of what I look like has even extended to not recognising myself in photos. 

It's fascinating that you can do it in your dreams though. I definitely can't, quite the opposite in fact. What I get is for example there will be "my sister" in the dream, she will sound like my sister, and all of the people in the dream will relate to her as my sister. BUT she will look like someone else entirely, often not even anyone I know. I am aware that the sister character has the wrong face on, but it's like my brain realises it can't get her face right so just stops bothering and puts completely random faces on instead!

I also have people speaking languages in my dreams that I know full well they can't speak in real life, but that's another story .....

I don't look at eyes more than I can help. I hate it, everyone knows I hate it. If I have to pretend to do it I do a bit of staring at eyebrows, seems to be enough lol.

I try hard to look people in the eye so I appear more normal - that means I do not see their nose or mouth or anything else - hence just seeing 2 circles as a face with nothing else around them. (a bit like my avatar pic).

It all seems to jumble up and I can't get the features to align in my mind's eye. I'm either focusing on their eyes or nose or mouth, etc. etc. and I can't keep the whole face together at once. Yuck! D: 

Have been trying this a bit more. Turns out I can picture a familiar photo a person's face happens to be in quite accurately indeed, face included, but I can't picture their face as a thing in its own right at ALL.