Face Recognition

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I'm having a bit of a problem.

I have a new (as of 2 weeks) part-time job cleaning a nearby church. Several times now, I have been unsure as to whether a man who spoke to me was my boss or not: He is a slightly overweight, medium-height man in his fifties; and there are three or four such men who frequent or work at the church. To make things even more complicated, two of them work in maintenance, as I do.

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention; maybe it's my poor eye contact; or maybe it just hasn't been long enough; but I can't seem to recognize people very easily at all. I remember being in the sixth grade and finally remembering all the names of my classmates by the time December came (we were a 30-person class that stayed together all day); and being proud of myself for it.

Does it take NTs three and a half months to remember the names (and match them to the faces) of thirty people with whom they spend thirty-five hours a week? I don't really think so...

Often times I distinguish between familiar/unfamiliar long before I can recognize who it is and from where I know them. I'm almost at this stage with my boss. Admittedly, I see him less than most people I've worked with; he gives me my orders and keys at the beginning of my four-hour shift and then takes the keys and records my time at the end of the shift--a total of about fifteen minutes a week, not thirty-five hours. Still, there is only one of him, and there were thirty of my classmates.

This is normal for me: I don't remember people very well. I remember them as well as I remember individual cats or individual trees or individual pieces of silverware, which is pretty well, for objects; but other people seem to remember faces so much more readily than I do. (I'm not saying a cat is an object. Cats are simply cats, and refuse to be cateogrized.)

Naturally, this has given me some trouble; but until now I've always warned people, "I might forget your name; but that doesn't mean I don't care," which has worked well enough. But if I were to forget something like what my boss looked like... that could land me in some social trouble.

I'm aware that NTs also have problems with names sometimes--memory classes often focus partially on remembering the names of all the people you have met at a party. I think my problem is a little more severe, though. Maybe my statement to other people isn't true: Maybe, with my focus on things rather than people, I *don't* care enough to remember people's faces and names. After all, if I can remember the damage dice for fifty different D&D weapons, I should be able to remember what someone looks like, shouldn't I?

If there are those who have had similar problems here, how did you solve them?

What I do is to squint a little and admit to having a little trouble recognizing people and ask the person to refresh your memory. If he knows you, he may be a little upset if you don't recognize him. If he doesn't, he'll probably tell you, and then you can say he looks like someone you know slightly.

Hope this helps.

there's a lot of people to me who look exactly the same.

i had this chick send me a friend request on myspace. she looked like about a million girls i've randomly seen before.

I regularly get mistaken for somebody else.

I think there are about ten generic faces for each sex and race.

Maybe that's why mixed blood people look so exotic... they break the mold.

Hello,

I had trouble to recognize people me too, and it's very embarassing because people sometime think that I ignore them.

I didn't find trick for that yet.

I've always had trouble with face recognition!

Up to about age 12, if I got seperated from my parents at the grocery store I would have trouble recognizing them when I saw them again; there'd been a couple times when I'd end up following complete strangers without realising something was wrong.



In about sixth or seventh grade, as the only white kid in a class full of African-American children, I found out the hard way that, when a teacher started laughing at me because near the end of the year I still didn't know any of my classmates' names, "but they all look alike" was the WRONG thing to offer as an explanation It sounded racist and earned me a lot of grief from everyone involved for the next couple of years, but it's like someone said above: it's like there's only a handful of generic faces for everyone of each gender and each race, and they all run together for me unless something really stands out (a strange haircut, a noticable scar or deformity, glasses, or something like that.)



I'm still slow about finally putting a name and face together, but I'm better at it than I used to be. But a couple weeks away from somebody is plenty of time for me to forget either the face or the name again. Or seeing someone in a different context can be confusing as well - for example, seeing a co-worker outside of work. And I get a lot of people just walking up to me and talking for a while, with me trying my best to keep up and act polite while trying to figure out who they are... sometimes they've gone for as long as a half an hour of talking to me before asking "you don't recognize me, do you?"

I made a point at my last family re-union of saying right up front that I have a hard time remembering names and faces in an up-beat sort of way, as if it's the most natural thing in the world, and that made a huge difference! Maybe it was just me, but everyone else seemed more relaxed about the whole thing because of it. I almost suspect that nearly everyone has trouble recognizing faces and names, and everyone feels a lot of pressure to get it all right, but that they're slightly better at doing it than I am and much better at disguising it than I am, so perhaps my admitting it the way I did let them know they weren't alone, and they could relax a little? Or maybe it was only the fact that it helped me relax more, that seemed to make them feel more comfortable?

i get this all the time, with moving around so much i often find it really hard to remeber people faces, or they all look the same, i am forever confusing people with other people.

If i get lost from my careeere during the day i tend not to be able to recognise them on, face, i have to rely on clothes or on bags ect.

^licks^

jammie

I have this problem too but that happens when I noticed them the first time.

I can identify. Right now I live in an all Hispanic area. I have an especially hard time telling people apart since everyone has dark brown hair, brown eyes, and dark complexion.

A few months ago, a woman in her 60's came up to the gate asking for my mother-in-law. I tried making conversation with her and asked if she lived in the neighborhood. It turned out that it was my wife's aunt. A woman who, not only had I been to her house before, but I helped to carry the casket at her husband's funeral. DOH!

Since I had last seen her, she had gotten a complete makeover and changed the style and color of her hair in order to try and attract a new hubby. So nobody thought I was a complete idiot for not recognizing her.

I'm usually really good at recognising faces, i recognise people while those around me are floundering and confused. However I just don't seem to remember some people at all. This one woman i've met and spoken too about half a dozen times and i still have know idea what she looks like, if i saw her walking down the street i wouldn't recognise her. I do that with a few random people, for no reason i can fathom. But most others...no problem!!

I can relate....Often I have problems with this. If I'm in town & see people I don't know but look physically similar to other people I DO know, I tend to skip a heartbeat for a second & feel A bit shocked & then within another millisecond I realise it's not them! This gets worse if I'm overtired. I recently asked my partner if he knew so & so was pregnant as I saw them & then realised this was actually someone who goes to my childs' old schl & I'd never seen them before but they looked remarkably like an old schl acquaintance - can get a bit weird at times.

If you have poor eye-contact, then that's probably the problem, because if you have excellent eye-contact like I do you can be more observant of people. My social skills have been excellent and they have improved. Good thing I was diagnosed when I was 2.

Hope this helps

Face Recognition Tests here: www.faceblind.org

There are also two tests you can take on the site as well.

I once didn't recognise my boyfriend when I saw him on the street. That was long before I knew about face-blindness or aspergers. It was really wierd. i think I had been not recognising people for a long time, but it never really made sense. People were always saying, "I saw you but you didn't say hello." and I just told them that they must ahve seen someone who looked like me.

Not being able to recognise people isn't something I've actively considered...but then again, I scored 22% on the Old-New Faces test

Come to think of it, though, I do tend to get by remembering certain facial and body features [buiild, hairstyles [i.e. long, short, etc] and styles of clothing...or, in a workplace environment, their role. It helps when they're in a certain environment, at the least.

I just took the Famous Persons Test, and surprised myself with 10/20 - much better than I expected! (I got all the presidents and Condoleeza Rice right, and maybe three or four of the actors on lucky guesses. I feel kinda bad I didn't get any of the British Prime Ministers right - I should have recognized Margaret Thatcher, at least.)


...And I also surprised myself with a 64% on the Old/New face recognition test, although I can't figure out how I did that well. It might be what Captain_Brown suggested: my problems might be from poor eye contact, but for the face recognition test I made a point of studying a face, particularly the eyes and eyebrows, a lot more than I ever would if I were to meet that person face-to-face.