Recognising faces I don't know.. seeing friends in strangers

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Hi, I'm really sorry if this is the wrong place but I found this section via google whilst unsuccessfully trying to find the term (if it has one) for this;

I see
a face, a random stranger for example, and almost always there's part of my mind linking it up to people I know, or knew.

For instance out of 20-30 people I see my brain will pick up on probably half of them as reminding me really strongly of people I know.

It feels like I haven't quite got the grasp of faces in general. You know when a friend shows you their new pet cats, who to you look identical because you're not at all familiar with them? I feel like that all the time with everyone. I can tell faces apart though, I just did a facial recognition test and scored 100%, but half of my brain always makes that link that makes me question myself.

I find myself saying things along the lines of "wow, she looks like my cousin" or something quite often, and no one else seeing it. In fact it doesn't have to be the face, it can be the nose, the eyes or the mouth, but my brains always there making the link.

It just doesn't feel like a normal way of thinking and to be honest it feels like it's getting worse.

Is there a name for this?

You've posted in a good place.

I experience this all the time.

But I don't have much information on it, and I just woke up. So I'm kind of in lazy mode right now.

It's called Face-Blindness and it's really common in people on the spectrum. I have the same thing!!

Just the other day I told my sister that I am constantly seeing people that I think might be her, my mom, dad, or anyone else in my life and she told me that's really weird and that that's happened to her literally three times in her life.

I see a girl with a brown ponytail around my sister's height and I go - there's my sister.

When I pointed out one girl that I would easily think was her, she said, um, when's the last time you saw me wearing shorts with sneakers?

She could easily decide to wear them one day though so that doesn't register with me as prohibitive to that girl being my sister.

So I guess I'm partially face-blind also!

Another thing - in dreams people's faces used to be completely blurred-out. It was the most frustrating thing because I realized this while I was dreaming and wanted to see their faces. Faces in dreams have gotten a bit clearer over the years but overall they're still blurred blobs.

Do any of you with face-blindness have these blurred faces in dreams too?

I think part of this is due to noticing certain details and then inferring a complete pattern - a familiar face - from that incomplete detail. At least, that's the best I've been able to figure out...

A) Ya, I'm really bad at thinking strangers are people I know. It makes me sad

B) I never see faces in dreams. I know who the person is, or at least what role they are playing in the dream, but faces are almost always unclear.

On the other hand I had a dream a few nights ago where I saw clearly the face of someone that i had not seen in years and didn't remember their face at all. It's rare though.

I'm not on the spectrum, so maybe I shouldn't post here. But I sometimes have symptoms of face-blindness too. When I need to remember people I've just met, I need to remember other things about them (hair, body type, clothes), because I won't recognize their faces. And I don't know if this is normal or not, but I can't picture 99% of people's faces in my head. I can think of their specifics (big ears, small eyes, thick lips, etc.) but I can't put the picture together in my head and imagine it, even for close friends or family.

When I dream, I never see anyone's face. I usually "know" that people are who they instinctively, even if they don't act or look anything like who they are. But I never see anyone's face, ever, in my dreams.

I also do that thing where I see other people as people I know. I do this all the time. I was in the supermarket the other day and I saw a man I thought was a friend of mine - same color hair, same skin color. I noticed the first time, when I saw his profile, that his nose was the wrong shape. But 10-15 minutes later, I saw him from behind again and I thought it was my friend again!

I've luckily never gone up to any stranger and acted as if I knew them, though

You should post here! I for one am very curious to know how common this phenomenon is in both spectrumite and NT populations! It's interesting that you DO have face-blindeness!



I have. I've started talking to people who I thought were my mom in the grocery store. If I look directly at their face it doesn't happen, but if I see them from far away or from the back or peripherally I can't distinguish someone from her who if I looked at them face-on would CLEARLY reveal themselves to be NOT my mother.

I used to get really anxious when I went to pick up my son from school, because I could not pick out his face from the bustling crowd of children emerging from the school entrance.
He sometimes walked past me and hid behind my back and the worst case was when he snook up on me and stood right next to me and I asked an acquaintance whether she'd seen my son, . You should have seen the look on her face.
My son always found it hilarious, but I didn't! Once I just about could turn away so he did not see my tears.

A woman once stood next to me at a pedestrian crossing and chewed my ear off for 3 minutes before saying: 'You don't recognize me at all, do you?' ' No.' I had to admit meekly. It turned out that she was a shop assistant in a local fabric shop that I frequent about once a year. Once a year!! !! ! What does she expect from a woman, who does not even recognize her own child, but then again she does not know, .

I'm always mistaking people in public for my sister. It takes me a moment to remember that she lives in another state and probably wouldn't be here unannounced.

A few weeks ago I saw someone on the streets of the college I attended who looked exactly like my organic chemistry teacher from 40 years ago in the same school. I rolled down my car window and called out to him to tell him, but he snubbed me and kept on walking. His loss.

I do sometimes mistake people I don't know for people I do, but this has happened often enough I am skeptical until I know for sure.

I also fail to recognize people I do know, especially outside of expected contexts.

I've recently been watching a lot of TV shows with actors in different roles (with different hair, clothes, etc) and it's kind of glaring when I can't recognize an actor who's playing a different character.

My son and I both are like this! I swear I saw an ex boyfriend the other day, to where I was staring at the guy and wanted to cry when I lost sight of him. I know that it wasn't him, he's been dead for several years, but I couldn't get my brain to wrap around that fact. I didn't realize that it was an Aspie thing. I fuss at my son when he says he sees someone- for instance, we just left TX and are in TN. He got pissed because he saw our neighbor from TX here in TN. I told him, "You KNOW she's still in TX...how could she be here?" But I told him he needs glasses.

I have the same problem, but it could also be because I'm extremely near sighted and hardly ever wear my glasses.

Enjoy it while you can. I was also very nearsighted when I was your age and also refused to wear glasses (another story). it served me very well in my work (engineering, like you) when I could get right up within inches of a mainframe computer's backplane to see things in fine detail. Around age 37 (I am 60 now) I began to notice that I could not solder in a simple console switch without a magnifying glass and that signaled the beginning of the change. Now I cannot focus any closer than about 12 inches and must wear reading glasses to see even moderately fine print. It is a change that comes with age.