Face Recognition / Context

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All the time! It really is a pain in the ass. I've actually done the exact same cousin/train thing too:/. I dread to think of all the people who have just thought I was being rude over the years.

I tendto recognise people by things like a coat they wear a lot, a uniform or their hair etc- all things that change a lot and leave me less able to recognise them easily.

I have this problem too....many times. In fact, I've mistaken strangers for people I knew...I guess I really didn't know what my friends looked like. Really embarrassing, when the person you think you're addressing is a complete stranger, not someone I knew/know. Difficult to explain too. I've also had times when I'd stare at someone trying to place where I knew him/her from but just drew a blank in my mind.

Tomboy

I'm bad at recognizing faces. and if i meet someone in a different place, maybe with different hairstyle i have the feeling i have never meet this person before.
When i was little i could not recognize my parents. And it can be dangerous, because this summer i have mistaken a drug addict for my brother.

I see faces pretty similar each others, so i had to adopt some tricks for being able to draw my character with different look

Sometimes I have difficulty remembering faces, but nothing unusual or debilitating. I am better with names than faces.

I am OK with faces, but the reason why I don't spot people is because I don't look at people when I'm walking. I look down or away from other eyes, because of my anxiety of other people looking at me. So I always think it's best that I don't look at them then I wouldn't know that they're looking at me. The only snag with that is I walk straight past people I know, then makes them think I'm stupid or unfriendly, so I then find myself having to explain myself.

And do you ever get that problem where you arrange to meet somebody at a certain place, and you go there, look around, don't see them anywhere, and find yourself just standing there looking confused and feeling like a twat, then you hear somebody call your name, but you really don't know which direction it's coming from, then you look all around then after some seconds you spot them standing or sitting in an awkward place where you didn't expect them to be? (eg round a corner, behind a bush, ect)

I think this is so embarrassing!

when it happens i just say i have facal reconition issues and they ether know about it or pretend to....when your blunt and truthful it's not an issue unless they are attracted to me......forgeting names for some reason bothers them more?

This reminds me, I was watching a documentary recently, and the host kept putting his face right up in the camera (or the camera person kept zooming in). Every time he'd do that, I'd instinctively pull back. I was teased for doing it, and it was pretty funny, but at the same time it actually did make me uncomfortable.

But yes, I actually went and got my eyes checked (back before I even knew about ASD) because it happened to me so often. Found out my vision is nearly perfect, aside from a slight astigmatism. I do sometimes think people look alike, too, if the features I distinguish them by are similar.

I actually posted the aforementioned picture in another thread.

Mostly I look away when it gets up close with the eyes.



Mine was, last time it was checked, about... I see as well at 40 feet as most people see at 20. I used to have much more acute hearing, but apparently listening to a lot of loud music (including one instance of sitting next to a speaker at a concert) can impact that.

Today, I got a ride home from the same guy who gave me one last week (Paratransit services to help patients on Medicaid get to appointments). He was leaning on his clearly labeled medical transport van, and:

* I noticed there was no driver and decided I had to find said driver to determine if he was there for me.
* I noticed him, but had no idea who he was - and for some reason I did not connect "leaning on the van" to "he must be the driver." My social imagination seems to suck.
* He said "Hello" like he recognized me, and I responded as if I recognized me.
* In the time it took me to process what he said, I recognized his voice, and thus knew who he was.
* I got a ride home
The end.

This used to happen to me a lot. I meet fewer people these days so it is less likely to happen. Still, three times in the past couple of months.

I still recognize my therapist by her hair.

Very often I run into the prosopagnosia problem. This issue is worst when I think that I know someone but I'm not sure if it really is the person in front of me. Sometimes I assume he or she really is who I think and it happens to be wrong. It's so embarassing that people have to tell me that this is not the person I'm thinking. But the more common case is not recognizing at all. I'm not confortable looking into people eyes, so I believe that I don't record too much information about their faces. I don't know if I have AS, sometimes I believe so, now I'm in doubt. Maybe other mental illness, don't know. But I surelly relate to facial blindness.

I'm really bad at recognizing faces in real-time. I have to see people 5 to 10 times in the same place to recognize them reliably. It gets even worse if I see them in a different place. I can't recognize them in photos either. The photo and the real person don't seem to match up. I can't remember anyone's name either. The introduction always goes in one ear and out the same ear. I can't figure out who the different characters are in movies and shows until the halfway point or later.

All these problems were far worse when I was a kid. I didn't recognize anyone outside my immediate family reliably until age 9 or 10. This is part of the reason I never responded to people who greeted me. I had no clue who they were. I also failed to recognize my father on certain occasions. There was a family friend who looked a lot like him, and I sometimes mistook one for the other.

However, I scored almost 100% on that online face blindness test. Not sure what this means.

I have this issue. It will register days later that someone was there but at the time I'll be completely oblivious. At worst I've had times that I don't recognize my mom right away, but that's rare. There was once that someone I played tennis with came up to me and said, "Hi." and all I did was stare at him. Felt horrible about it after I realized what had happened but... What are you to do?

I never know how people always manage to see people in cars, even if they don't know the type of car or numberplate. Once I was walking with my cousin, and a car drove past and waved to us. I said, ''was that somebody who waved?'' and my cousin said, ''yes - it was one of your neighbours. I recognised her.'' But my cousin didn't know her car or numberplate or anything. And the car went by pretty quick, and the windows had the reflection of the sun and the trees in, so it was impossible to see inside the car anyway.

My husband has mild facial blindness, although he swears he's NT (I have my doubts). We used to watch The New Adventures of Superman, every week. One evening we sat down to watch a film. At one scene, I said 'Oh look, I didn't know she was in this'. It was Teri Hatcher, looking just as she does in the series. My husband said, 'I don't know, who is it?' I gave him a few clues. I eventually told him what series she was in and he asked which part she played.
That's when I realised he had this trait. He's fine with people he sees every day, but he doesn't recognise some of our neighbours, if we meet them elsewhere.

He also has a problem with trying to describe someone. He'll say the person has black hair, when others would desribe it as light brown. However, he has much better eyesight than me.

My mum automatically greets me with "It's your mother!" - she knows damned well that I've only ever failed to recognise her if it's somewhere I really don't expect her to be but she gets a kick (cheeky) out of saying it as a std greeting now.

And we've been at our current address since February - it's now June - but I don't think our neighbours on one side are talking to us any more - the other day when I was watering the footpath I had a failed to recognise type encounter with the wife because she rode up on a bicycle and greeted me (I didn't even know they had one). End result was a very awkward encounter - as if the lack of initial recognition wasn't bad enough I think the sudden TOTAL recognition REALLY put the wind up her. After a very awkward exchange she scuttled away looking really worried and there have been no more greetings or salutations since

It's been a bad week actually - because a few days before that I was at a coffee shop at a local mall with my family when I heard my name being called - my wife had to point out a fellow nearby - usual routine - it was actually a former workmate I've known for years but only at the airport not socially so he had to identify himself - at which point the penny dropped etc. That set the awkward tone to start with and then when he related some really terrible personal news about another former workmate I had to constantly fight with myself to not turn into a blubbering mess - result was a very blank exterior and quite unresponsive conversation. After a fairly stilted exchange at the end of which I really stupidly finished up with the wrong "off the shelf" salutation which happened purely BECAUSE I was so upset - ie. it was really upbeat and chirpy (TOTALLY inappropriate considering the news we'd just discussed) - I'm sure I left him thinking I'm a complete a**hole.

I usually have to 'meet' someone at least half a dozen times before I begin to recognize them on sight, and I can still be thrown again if they radically change their appearance or I see them somewhere unexpected. Most people look very much the same to me. I have a particular problem with young women who tend to dress or have their hair quite similarly.

I was at a science festival yesterday and did a test, as did my husband. In the test you were shown pairs of faces, which looked very alike and you had to say whether you thought they were 2 photos of the same person or of 2 different people. You then had to say how sure you were. I scored 92.5% and my husband scored 57.5%. Also, I whizzed through it, but he spent ages on each pair of faces. I never struggle to recognise people, but my husband always does. Anyone else done a similar test?