Published on 12, July, 2020
Does anyone know much about prosopagnosia? Is there any links with autism? If so how can you get it diagnosed?
I am an autistic adult and I have always struggled to recognise places and people including myself in photographs, photographs always look different compared with what/who I visualise in my mind. In fact because of this I don't really take photographs because I don't see the point as they look nothing like what I wanted to capture in the first place.
Would welcome any advice on this
Thank you
I see. I think you can get diagnosed for it. I first heard about it when my boss asked me to take an online test for it, lol! He noticed that I didn’t recognise people. But according to the test, I was borderline! Good luck. I would imagine it’s relatively easy to get tested.
It's a bit complicated, it's for a legal matter....
Why do you want to get it diagnosed?
I don't get it with faces too badly, but places are a nightmare. I've got off a bus before because it stopped near a coop on a corner, and I know I live in a village with a coop on the corner near the bus stop. Miles from home.
I can also be taken by car through an industrial estate and think I am near home because there is an industrial estate a few miles from my village - and be completely in the wrong place!
I even put it in my PIP for travel - I often get lost thinking I know where I am, get the right bus in the wrong direction, etc. I didn't know it had a name though!
I didn't used to have problems but after a brain injury in 2013 I now have great difficulty remembering faces unless there is something abnormal about them - like a Mohecan or an eye patch.
The engineer in me has analysed this and it seems to be that normal things are static - they never change - a car is a car from any angle, a chair is always the same. People are hugely variable from one moment to the next - their expression, hair colour, clothes, posture, make-up, hair style, they may be tired or happy, or any other facial changes. I need lots of extra data about the person to recognise them.
Some people are just so 'average' that nothing sticks - I simply cannot remember them.
If I try to remember people, I have no data - I recall them as two dots for eyes and nothing else.
I have difficulty spotting people from their photo as they often look too different for me to link them up.
I find a lot of women difficult to separate because make-up styles make them look so similar and generic.
I've suffered from prosopagnosia for a very long time. When I'm asked about my disabilities I mention it. But no-one has ever taken it seriously.