I've read through some posts in search for info and experiences on AS. Twice now I have seen a reference of AS people not recognizing faces. Is that a symptom?

My son recognizes faces, but he seems to mix up kids now and then. He may have someone in his class for a year and see someone else that he sort of knows and mix them up. He is terrible with names, too.

Some people in the autism spectrum are face blind. As a disorder I berlieve it is called prosphagnosia. I don't think it is diagnostic for autism spectrum disorders because there are people who are not autistic who are face blind.

Myself, I am not very good with faces. It takes me a while to learn to recognize people. In testing I score in the bottom 25 percent of the population in face recognition. I'm not autistic, I just have adhd.

ME :D

I have analysed my prosopagnosia (face blindness) as follows: My brain disengages my vision in order to concentrate on processing other information and/or communication - like minimising windows on a PC. Others see this manifesting as gaze avoidance. i.e. I do not process any visual information whilst gaze avoidance occurs - my brain is too busy focussed on other processes such as sorting info or formulating sentences. This is why I do not process enough visual/audio data to enable me to recognise faces and often names as well. It is a matter of brain "focus", or sacrificing one task to the benefit of another. Hope that makes sense.

I don't know if my own difficulties in recognizing faces are severe enough to count as face blindness but my capability at this is way below most people's. I haven't been officially diagnosed with Asperger's (I am in my 30s) but my psychiatrist thinks it is consistent with the symptoms I report and his own observations. speedo is right in that face blindness is not a diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder, so it is probably not a core symptom. That said, it does seem to present itself with some regularity in those with Asperger's.

I too, am bad with names as well.

Recognizing people in pictures is very shaky, especially if the image is not good sized and sharp. I can't stand it when historical photos don't have all the figures labelled. Apparently they think that if you saw him in one photo you will recognize him in the others. I don't.

When I state that person X has a resemblance to Y generally the response is knitted brows and eye rolls. Family resemblances unless they are very obvious, like a distinct nose, are unrecognized. Perhaps the most blatant example of this was at the funeral of my father. His graduation photo from High School was on display by the casket. Probably out of the 60 or so people I spoke to that day three quarters of them commented that I looked exactly like my Dad. My thoughts on whether we resembled each other? Not really, maybe a little around the eyes.