I nearly always use examples in threads like these. This isn't only because I struggle to communicate clearly (and so using examples is a kind of shortcut, and better than my usual billion-word meandering) but also because I don't know any autistic people except for the good folks on this board; so your advice, insights, and details of your experiences - perhaps similar to the ones I'm going to mention - might help & inform us all and not just me. I realise that difficulties with facial recognition aren't uncommon in autistic people, but thought it'd be useful for us to relate our own particular problems. Here goes:
* A standard newspaper feature about, say, an actor. It's often an interview and, as a reader, I am used to the typical format of such articles. Pieces like this are sometimes accompanied by photo-shoot pictures in which the actor wears different, fashionable clothes in each image and, perhaps, has their hair styled or 'posed' slightly differently in each photo. Let's say there are four pix. My difficulty is this: my mind struggles to accept that it's the same actor in every picture - even though I pretty much know it's the same person all along, I still feel certain that it *must* be four different people...because three of them now look different to the person in the first photograph.
* It's natural and understandable to expect someone we haven't seen for ages to look the same as when we last met. It's the kind of unthinking assumption which might be common to most people. But I literally expect these familiar folks to look exactly the same as before, even if thirty years have passed; and if they *don't* look the same then I struggle to believe it's really them (thankfully, I don't feel paranoid about them or feel threatened but only very confused).
* Recently, I had a long interview - around two-and-a-half hours - at close quarters with two people. It was pretty much face-to-face. This was less than three weeks ago, but now I've forgotten what those others looked like...I can only remember that one of them had a beard. This isn't an ideal situation because I have another appointment with the two people coming up. My memory is generally poor anyway. I can hardly say to the receptionist: "Hi, my name is Simon I'veforgottenmyownsurname and I'm here to see Mr Beard and the Invisible Woman...you know - the one who probably has hair."
I never mean to write so much, and I apologise for doing so again. What are your own experiences?
