Face blindness and ASD

[LucyStoner]

I am wondering if any parents with kids on the spectrum here have personal experience with face blindness (a marketely lower than average ability to recognize faces)?

 

I had an ah-ha moment this weekend with my son who has autism. I had taken him to a chamber concert with viol, violin, and harpsichord parts and he was extremely into the music but it came up that he didn't realize that there were only 3 musicians. He thought different people were coming out between pieces and he wondered where they found that many harpischord players and if all the violinists were wearing turquoise on purpose, lol. It was a revalation to him that over the many years that I've taken him to such events, it is quite normal for the musicians to exit after the applause and the re-enter and re-tune. We were quite close to the stage, so it's not a vision thing. It just reminded me of all the things I take for granted or as a given but which for him are a challenge. It also put a new perspective on this one time where I was meeting someone named "Ted" and he was uncharacteristically very short and rude to the person. When we were discussing that later he totally didn't know he wasn't the same "Ted" whom had been a major PITA to me a couple of years ago and his behavior was in large part his anger and feeling protective of his family/wary. He was very confused as to why I was meeting "Ted" when I really was just meeting someone else named "Ted". Different ages, appearances but he thought it was the same "Ted". There have also been many times people from a class or event have seen him and said hello and he had no idea who they were.

 

Just curious to hear what others homeschooling with autism have noticed about themselves or their kids and facial recognition abilities. What have you done that has helped with this?

[Heartsjoy]

I think the developmental skill is called perspective taking. I've seen this; it's also a flexiblity concept that person X can also show up at the grocery store. There's a facebook group called autism guide that talks about how to use RDI therapy to work on this skill. You have to target the weak unmylenated nerve pathway and  work it till it works blindfolded just like one would work times tables. 

[chiguirre]

Not really help, but here's a link to a youtube of Oliver Sacks talking about his own face blindness.

 

 

That might make your ds feel less alone and give him a good role model.

[Kathryn]

Yes! We knew early on that DS identified people by the shirt they were wearing, and that he often didn't recognize people that he knew, especially if we didn't see them in their normal environment. But, I found out the extent of it when the story about Arnold Schwarzenegger having an illegitimate child was on the news one night. DS was walking by when a picture of the boy was on the screen and the kid's face was blurred out. DS asked why they did that. I told him it was to protect the boy's privacy so no one would recognize him. He looked completely baffled and said "but you can't tell who someone is by looking at their face!" A lightbulb went off in my head. Shortly before or after that, we were on an outdoor field trip and he spent hours with a girl his age. When we were leaving, she took off her jacket to get in her car, but then ran back to say goodbye to DS. When she left, DS asked me who that girl was that was just talking to him. I told him it was X, who he'd just spent the last three hours glued to and he responded, "no it wasn't, she was wearing a pink jacket."

 

Anyway, I brought it up with his OT and she spent months working with him on it and he is much better at it now, though it doesn't come naturally. She taught him to focus on individual facial features instead of things that routinely change like clothes or hairstyle. They looked at bone structure, eye color, nose and lip shape, etc. I know she used a lot of celebrity magazines since celebrities change looks often and he would have to pick out or tell her if two pictures were of the same person or a different person, activities like that.

[Lisa in Jax]

Facial recognition is a right brain activity. Right brain weakness is common in autism -- especially Asperger's, and in Nonverbal Learning Disability. 

 

So, IMO, it's very possible that your son's problems with facial recognition are completely understandable, given his autism.

 

 

[celticmom]

We were recently at an event that we go to annually and dd had trouble recognizing people that she has been around in the past. I also had trouble with this in the past. I always thought I had missed some developmental window due to a very late diagnosis of severe myopia. What helped me was learning how to draw faces.

[Mergath]

Have you checked out the prosopagnosia page on wikipedia?  It has quite a bit of info.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia

 

They do list autism as one of the things that can be related to developmental prosopagnosia.  Temporal lobe damage can also cause it, which is why I have issues.  I don't know how many times I've had to pretend to know someone in public who has sat and talked with me for several minutes because my broken brain couldn't pull up their file, so to speak.

[rebbyribs]

 I don't have a kid on the spectrum (that I know of), but I have a lot of trouble with face recognition.  I'm not terrible at recognizing *people*, it's just that I don't really use faces.  (I rely more on context, hair, clothing, voice, and gait.)  I had no idea that I was particularly bad at face recognition until I took the Cambridge Face Memory Test a couple of years ago. My score was almost 2 std deviations below normal.

 

Realizing what was going on was huge!  It was really helpful to learn that other people perceive faces much differently than I do.  Things like police sketches, people recognizing famous people on the street, and pictures of people with black bars over the eyes and nose for privacy made much more sense! 

 

Once I knew what was going on, I also had something to work on.  I realized that I don't tend to look directly at people's faces (it feels a little wrong to me - like it's too intimate, maybe).  It helps to make a point of looking at someone's face when I'm introduced, and trying to find some facial characteristic that I can put into words to help me remember.  I still find it very disorienting when someone gets a haircut or changes their facial hair.  A good friend of mine did this recently, and the first time I saw him with a full beard, I kept wondering if it really was him, even though the voice and context cues were right.  

[alef]

I also have trouble with faces. I've never understood how people can see a photo of a celebrity and know who they are. I have trouble following characters through movies, I lose track of who is who. I don't notice clothes much either...

[Julie Smith]

I have trouble with faces. But instead I just say, "I'm like Lois Lane. .... I could easily be fooled by the Superman / Clark Kent thing."

 

[BlueTaelon]

Thank you for asking this OP, this is something I have trouble with and reading the responses helped me to understand whats going on. I am terrible with faces and names. If I can't pick out a feature to go with the voice I can't recognize the person.

[Carolyn in Ohio]

My aspie son has problems telling two sisters who live next door apart. These are girls who have played with my dd since they were toddlers,are always around the house and my ds knows the family very well. Still one will come to the door to ask for dd, and he won't know which one it is.

 

I am only ok with faces in person, but when I am watching a movie, I always end up asking "wait, is that the same guy who did X before?" I am terrible with faces then, and have only realized this in the past few years.

 

Carolyn

[Julie Smith]

I am only ok with faces in person, but when I am watching a movie, I always end up asking "wait, is that the same guy who did X before?" I am terrible with faces then, and have only realized this in the past few years.

 

Carolyn

I admit I pass on movies which have one or two miancharacters with the same skin and hair color and length.