Face Recognition / Context

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I have had trouble with recognizing people in unusual or unexpected contexts - often I can manage when I make conscious effort - and hearing a voice usually makes recognition instant. Going just by sight, has been interesting. Once in awhile, I will just totally not recognize a person - even a familiar one. In a familiar context, this is usually not an issue.

I don't see people as looking the same - in fact, everyone looks quite different. It just for some reason does not "click" that this person is in my memory - something is missing. Once, I did not recognize my own cousin sitting across from me on a city train - that was odd, and I still am confused how it even happened. Just recently, I actually pissed some people off because I didn't recognize them, or respond to their casual "hello" from afar when I apparently looked at them. They though I was being a "jerk" or something (even though I had talked about AS issues with them).

Anyways, I always feel guilty when this happens. And for some reason it usually upsets people a lot when I don't recognize who/when I supposed to. I can avoid it with conscious effort usually. I don't know - this has always bothered me, and it's rare these days that I blank completely. Anyone else have this particular problem?

I have this too! So embarrassing sometimes. If I met someone once I would find them extremely hard to recognise again or if I saw them out of context. I tend not to talk to or make eye contact with people in my office building just in case they are someone that I have met but cannot remember. It is great if someone has some really distinguishing feature, then it is much easier to recognise them. Unfortunately I have red hair, so people tend to remember me easily. I have tried different strategies for overcoming this, but nothing seems to work. One of the great things about being diagnosed with AS is that at least I can now warn people that I might not remember them, and have a valid reason for it!

I 've had what I think are some mild face recognition issues over the years. I do have a tendency to see people who do not look similar to each other as looking similar. I think I am usually more likely to forget a name than I am to not recognize someone's face.

Very often.. Many people who said hello me, some of them even smile, more female than male have that instinct and see that i don't recognize them and make surprise face. I have even case when one women i have never recognized, she is always like different me and i told her that in first look never recognize her, she probably thinks that i don't like her and prepare.

my friend is severely autistic but he always recognizes me even if i meet him at a random place. he smells me to make sure before he smiles however. all the time people say hi to me and i say hi back but i dont know who they are. if you do not tell them they never know you dont know them so who cares?

I've always had difficulty recogniseing faces. People have stopped me and had a conversation and even after they have gone i still cant remember where or when i met them before.

Most embaresing was being stopped by someone who i had been 'intimate' with and i still didnt know who they were. I worked it out days after.

Actually, thinking back, I think I actually do sometimes have more severe face recognition difficulties. I was thinking in terms of forgetting people's names (which I actually do fairly frequently), and I can remember people's faces if I've been around them a lot, but sometimes when I run into people in unfamiliar contexts I don't just forget their names, I have no idea who they are. Recently, one of my niece's friends from a few years ago dropped by and I didn't recognize him at all until he gave his name and when I'd seen him last (only a few years ago, and fairly frequently at the time).

I also only have a vague idea of what my therapist looks like, and I've been seeing her for about four and a half months now.

I tend to score in the typical range on the face recognition test in the stickied tests thread, but I am able to memorize the heads by their shape and process of elimination. I wonder how that test would work if they gave the faces hair and switched the hair around. I know on the other test (recognizing celebrities) I only got 52% - sometimes it was because I couldn't remember the name but knew who it was (Seinfeld) and sometimes it was because I couldn't even recognize the face (I think Princess Di).

I am not sure where I am with any of this, or how much I'm compensating on that test to get higher scores. I never really gave the fact that I tend to forget who people are much thought before recently.

One of the best Biometric Identification to challenge criminals.

I have similar problems with recognizing people. I take it with a little humor nowadays, thanks for the fact I already know there is such thing as AS. Recently one of my colleagues who joined us only a month ago, moved a desk sideways, and I had to ask when I stepped in the room, where she was, although she sat there... They took it with a smile, I smiled with them. Another time, I tried to memorize a new colleague, looked at her from different angles, tried to memorize her face, name, it was 3 month ago, but I'm sure I couldn't recognize her in the street right now... I can miss literally anybody on the street when they pass by me, there is too much evidence for it, no doubt...

Btw, I also scored acceptable on the face memory test, just below average. Yet, I wish I could do way better in this area, especially to be prepared to change workplace, work environment, if I have to.

teh he he you didn't recognise your own cousin. i do that all the time with my sisters. this one time she popped up some place unexpectedly and i spent a minute staring at her trying to work out if it was her or not. i decided it wasnt and looked away and 5 secs later this random girl is talking to me and it still takes 5 seconds more to figure out it is her. in my defence she looks like a clone of everyone else. i also tend to think people who dont look alike are the same person and end up staring at them for a long time trying to differentiate between them. if someone changes their hair i will forget who they are. especially if they were formally redheads or curly haired. when i see people i know on the street i need to look at them a second time to discern whether or not i know them which can get awkward because people think im being a snob or i end up staring for longer than is polite. i wonder why it is that we cannot recognise people outside of context?

Absolutely, just posted about this on another thread. The bane of my social life. I can't remember names or faces. If I get a face from one context down and see them somewhere else, nothing registers. I don't dare use names, in case they are the wrong ones. People must think I'm an arrogant ass.

This happens to me sometimes, yes.

I have this too, last month I had a random conversation with a stranger thinking it was someone I worked with for years, Not noticing their subtle uncomfortable stance and responses, I realized the person didn't have the"identifying" tattoo on his neck.
I was talking to them for 15 minutes before this.

I walked away feeling so embarrassed and retreated back to my lair feeling a complete idiot. HAHA

This is called prosopagnosia, or "face blindness". It's not uncommon for Aspies. I'm heavily affected by this, and have even lost some friends because of it.

I can identify with most of this.

I've only been seeing my therapist for 2months now - if I saw her out at the store I wouldn't recognize her. It's a toss up if I'll recognize the gp I've seen for 20+ years anyplace other than at her office. I ran into her at the supermarket and, in that brief conversation I knew that I knew her but I couldn't place where and the name felt like it was on the tip of my tongue but never came out. I find that I often end up placing people by context of the conversation. If the conversation is sufficiently vague I just bluff my way through it. Several times my husband has asked 'Who was that?' after a 10- 15 minutes of small talk and I'll just shrug 'I have no idea.' Quite honestly, it could have been a complete stranger and I would never have known the difference although I think I usually have a nagging feeling that I do know them in some way. Occassionally this strategy fails - someone who actually knew me from years ago will stop me and realize 5-10 minutes in that I have no idea who they are (I think it is because my bluffing fails to acknowledge a detail from the past that I should know). I had one guy actually look at me, defeatedly and say 'You don't remember me, do you?' Sadly, it was someone I had once been intimate with...

I honestly think a good portion of this is because I simply do not look at or commit peoples faces to memory unless they are family. And it is only in face to face contact that I do this. I DO recognise faces from pictures and tv readily and easily. I'm not sure why this is. I'm sure a doctor would be quick to whip out the 'social anxiety' dx becasue I only fail to acknowledge faces in live interaction but I simply don't feel that is true. People don't scare me, I don't shun social interaction, I've had, maybe hundreds of acquaintences throughout my life and very few have ever asked me to 'look them in the eye' yet, I'm fairly certain I have ever looked anyone in the eye for anything more than a passing glance. Maybe it has something to do with my attention span as well. Even in a conversation, I am maintaining my own internal dialogue - multitasking - although my ability to this is getting much worse with age.

I'm one of those artsy/creative types who sucks badly at math. As a general rule, I do excellent on the static facial recognition tests. I can identify eomtions on pictures of faces, I can ID famous people and I feel this is because I am very used to looking at individual pieces and parts of the whole in order to draw them. My figure drawing is VASTLY better when drawing from photographs vs a live model. I would like to know the root cause of this aversion to 'looking people in the eye' because I do this and find it excruiatingly uncomfortable to just sit and look into someones eyes. I always say it makes me 'crawl out of my skin' but even that isn't really strong enough to describe it.

I can identify with a lot of what you wrote back. I, too, have had the "You don't remember me, do you?" interaction, although it wasn't with someone I had been intimate with. I had someone sit down next to me in high school and say hi, and I was like "huh?" Really friendly and nice, but I was utterly lost and confused. He got mad and stormed off when I was unable to place who he was, though. I suspect that he was someone from my fifth grade class, but that didn't cross my mind until I was well past high school - just one example.

I actually used to have a lot of trouble identifying actors in movies (and even sometimes identifying characters). It was easier with TV shows because they were on week after week. I think in the 90s, I picked up the habit of trying to remember who was in each movie and look for them in others, and that's worked fairly well. I do spend probably more time than is reasonable trying to identify some actors by voice.

With eye contact, sometimes it feels like looking into the sun. Like my eyes actually hurt and I start to overload. I actually have issues with eyes in videos, too. This is more likely to happen on Youtube - I remember watching this one guy's video on how to do a Christopher Walken impression (he's really good at it) and he kept getting right up into the camera and I had to look away. Even a picture with direct enough eye contact with the camera is uncomfortable sometimes. And I know I usually watch actors' mouths rather than eyes. I have been wondering over the past few months if this is why I recognize some faces and not others, but I don't have any educated guesses at the moment.

Last edited by Verdandi on 23 May 2011, 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.