“Everyone knows Jeannie; she just doesn’t know them.”
That was the common phrase I heard in high school. A constant stream of hugs, smiles, and waves filled my days. I never understood how so many people who I didn’t know, knew me.
Prosopagnosia, also known as “facial agnosia” or “face-blindness,” is a neurological disorder that makes facial recognition difficult or impossible. Two thirds of autistic children and adults have some degree of face-blindness. I live among those numbers.
Do I know you? That is the question that runs through my head when someone I don’t recognize approaches me in public. They call me by name, ask about my children, my parents, and my work—I know I should know this person, but I do not.
When my husband and I were first married we attended a very large church in Brooklyn, NY where I often spoke to people having no idea who they were. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. I just figured that in such a large church I never ran into the same person twice.
Being greeted by hugs and kisses from strangers has always made me uncomfortable; I don’t like to be touched. To add to my discomfort the odd looks these strangers gave me when I introduced myself was unnerving. When people approached us to talk, I assumed that my husband knew them. We talked for a while, they left, and my husband would say, “You know them, I introduced you last week.” You did?
I met the same people at church, each Sunday, talked with them, and still did not recognize them the following week. It’s no wonder they looked at me like I was a lunatic when I introduced myself, yet again.
When the same scene played itself out over and over, I began to believe what I had been told my entire life. I was a lazy, absent-minded, self-absorbed air-head, who didn’t care enough about people to remember them. Or—I was stuck up, obnoxious, too good for anyone, and just ignored people; nothing could have been further from the truth.
The first time I read about Face-blindness, I was stunned. I had another one of those “ah ha” moments. The moments were I had to look back at my life with new eyes, evaluating it through the lens of Autism.
It took 38 years for me to be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), a form of high functioning Autism—38 years of confusing experiences.
When I was a child AS was not a known diagnosis in the United States. Although, well-known in Europe for more than twenty years at the time, it only became a viable diagnosis in the U.S. in 1994; three years after I was out of high school, and two years after I’d dropped out of college the first time around.
What is wrong with me? Why do I have trouble recognizing faces?
We do not see with our eyes, we “see” with our brains. All of us—with or without Autism see with our brains. Our eyes take in a snapshot but it is our brains that process all the information in the photo. It makes sense of all the patterns, categorizes them, and stores them for later use (recognition).
I fail to recognize familiar faces, but I never fail to recognize a tree, or a cat, or the shapes of clouds. Why?
A number of theories have arisen to answer this question. Maybe because we tend to not look people in the eye, or focus on their faces, we have a hard time remembering them. It is said that autistics tend to be socially uninterested—that we don’t care enough to remember people.
Could it be an issue of weak central coherence?
Those with weak central coherence tend to focus on details but lose track of, or don’t perceive the whole. A tendency to focus on minute details, a portion of the face or specific feature, without taking in the whole picture could be partially responsible for many autistics having have difficulty with facial recognition. All of these theories seem viable; however, I believe there is more to it than that.
Facial recognition is isolated in the right temporal lobe in the “fusiform face area.” Non-facial recognition happens on the left side of the brain. In other words, all other details, pieces, and patterns are processed on the left side of the brain.
Why does this matter? Autistics tend to do fairly well on pattern recognition tests—significantly better than their neuro-typical counterparts, but do poorly on facial recognition tests. The opposite is true for neuro-typical people who perform very well on facial recognition test, but do poorly in pattern recognition. In the autistic brain it seems that the “fusiform face area” does not function the way other people’s do.
This could explain why I wouldn’t recognize you if you stood on your head—or would I? Tests showed that autistics were able to recognize faces that they viewed upside down. Researchers found that the circuitry that recognizes faces only works on faces that are right side up. Upside down faces are routed to the left side of the brain to be processed like any other image. The upside down faces processed like patterns, and autistics recognized those facial patterns.
“How did you know it was me?” a friend asked pulling her mask from her face.
Costume parties, for me, are like any other social gathering. If I knew you well, I recognized you. It did not matter what you used to cover your face. I recognized the contour of my friend’s hands, her ring, the shoes we bought at the mall that summer, the way she stood, and swished her head back and forth when she talked. I spotted her from across the room, without hearing her say a word, or knowing what costume she was wearing.
Most people rely on facial features to recognize someone they know. I’ve always wondered why bank robbers wore ski masks, but did not disguise the rest of the body. And it was ridiculous that in superhero movies no one recognized their loved ones because they wore a mask over their face. Don’t all people rely on other details to recognize people they know?
When I think of my brother, I can form a mental picture of his face in my mind. I have no problem recognizing people who I know well. But I can also bring up just as sharp mental picture of his hands, or the way he has this one thick vein that rolls back and forth over his wrist bone. My oldest brother has hands exactly like my mother’s, my father’s hands look exactly like his fathers, and my son’s feet are very similar to my youngest brother’s feet. I would recognize the way the hair lies across my husband’s arms, and would recognize him even if he wore a mask. These details are as vivid as any face I can recall.
For several years I worked in prisons. My co-workers often wore uniforms, and were stationed at the same posts day after day. On a daily basis, I recognized them, said hello, knew their names—but if I saw them outside work, I did not recognize them. If their uniform was off, or they were not where they should be (at their post), then I did not recognize them. I processed the whole situation—the person, in uniform, sitting behind that desk. I was not processing the person’s face. Place this same person in the supermarket, at the post office, or in the school cafeteria eating with their children, and I do not recognize them at all.
Many people have had the experience of seeing someone, and not being able to “place” their face; they the person who stands before them from somewhere, but can’t remember where. Or, they know the face and cannot recall a name. I too, have had these types of experiences with those that I have had contact with often enough to recognize something about them. But—more often than not, I simple do not recognize them at all. There is no inkling of familiarity, no spark of recognition; it is as if I am staring into the face of a complete and total stranger.
An except from Twirling Naked in the Streets and No-One Noticed…
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Just an up date – I really found my 50th Birthday party very difficult. I made it an 80’s disco theme. Everyone was in fancy dress. I struggled with most of the people there, to work out who they were.
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I have facial blindness very badly. I don’t even recognise my children. I thought I was the only one. I am autistic and did not know this is related and other out there. It has made all my life very hard, and still does. So glad I just googled this problem and found your site. I just went to a movie and was later asked who the actors were. They thought I was lying and had not gone as I did not know who was in it. lol. A lot of people think I am rude, especially if I have known them for over 20 years and just walk past them. Are there people out there with it as bad as me? I can’t do faces. I go by body shape, clothes, voice and location. wow….. another thing I need to look into now. Got to love the autistic spectrum. All my side are autistic and all my ex husbands family are aspie, so mathematically we had to get 3 kids with autism, but none of them have facial blindness – just me. Debbie 🙂
Finally, just recently, an answer, a label, to what has plagued me for years, not as severely as many…what a relief! but even so it has been very frustrating and sometimes embarassing. Funny you should mention church. I have on occassion changed churches because it reaches a point you can’t introduce yourself one more time. Meeting someone out of context is fraught with potential problems…hopefully I will recognize their voice or discussion before they realize I don’t have a clue.. My mother mentioned to having a similar difficulty. When we moved to central Wisconsin it was overwhelming. So many scandanavians! they all looked alike to me, blonde and good looking. I decided to slightly smile at anyone I met just in case I “should know them”. The plan Backfired. They all began smiling back at me….QUESTION: was anyone else very shy as a child? were we shy because of this. OR did we miss a valuable learning time needed for this skill because we were so shy we didn’t actually look at people. …. Kat
Hi Kat,
I do the smiling at everyone thing too, and yes, usually they smile back so it has not been helpful in letting me know if I do indeed know them or not. But on the other hand, smiling at everyone makes me appear friendly and polite so I guess it wasn’t a complete wash. As far as being shy, NO, not me, I was never shy…but it didn’t stop me from not recognizing anyone. In fact, I think it made it worse because I should have “known” even more people because I always talked to anyone. That said, I don’t really remember if people talked to me when I was younger as the conversations were pretty one sided. I talked–they listened…I think, or at least I didn’t notice if they weren’t listening. LOL
Does anyone happen to know how to pronounce “Prosopagnosia” . in a conversationally fluid way. (please not using the dictionary’s upside down e’s etc) now that I have some insight into this embarrassing problem it would be handy to not look the complete fool stumbling around trying to pronounce it. People seem to respect the medical terminology which I can then re-define as Face -blindness.
Great to not be feel like I am a lazy egocentric person, who has not focused on the other person. I am so thankful that mine is relatively mild. But even so, given enough passage of time I am likely to pass by a face that I had come to know due to daily contact. It happened just this past weekend at a Fall Festival. Out of the Huge crowds,a person recognized me, I drew a blank, maybe had even looked past her; luckily there were enough cues in the conversation she started that it all pieced together.
((^..^)))kat
Pro-so-pag(like bag )-no-see-ah
So funny that the last part includes “no see.” Don’t be insulted if I don’t say hi because I “no see ‘ya” either.
Haha! Is that what I wrote? That’s funny. At some point I will start seeing my errors … ya probably not! 🙂
I’m so ridiculously awful at faces that I can’t recognize family members if they get a haircut.
I generally just assume I’ve already met whoever I am talking to at any given time.
It’s stressful, though.
Thank you for my ah ha moment. Its like you are telling my life story. Only they foolishly assigned me the role of greeter at church! I kept greeting the same people over and over.
Melissa that made me laugh! A greeter at church would be a horrible place for me, unless of course people don’t mind me introducing myself to them over and over again like I’d never seen them before. LOL (I’ve done that by way 🙂
I’m so glad you stopped by my blog. I’m now following yours. I have two sons with autism, but they can’t describe their experience of the world in the way you can. Even though everyone is different, including every autistic person, your writing gives me more insight into their lives. Thank you for that. I never heard the term Aspie until you used it. Interesting. Anyway, thanks again and I look forward to reading more.
I have face blindness too I think. I took the tests from Harvard that you mentioned in a prior blog entry. I just found out this weekend. Thanks for explaining it a bit more.