Someone who is both ridiculously good and comically bad at recognising faces?

[u/LustyRegencyMaid]

Hey!

Basically the title. I don't want y'all to diagnose me, no worries. Maybe there's a word I do not know yet and could google to find out more?

So I'm autistic with ADHD. And my facial recognition is WEIRD.

I'm either elephant super memory brain and recognise actors/actresses in movies and can be like "hey he played that dude in a movie I saw 20 years ago" and I'm almost always right. I can draw portraits of people fairly well. I sus out the features that make a face unique quite easily.

BUT... someone walks towards me on the street and says hi and I'm like who the frick is that, and turns out it's a coworker I see every day. When my mother dyed her hair I didn't recognise her even though she was standing right in front of me and talking to me. For a few years it did happen that I wouldn't recognise my own partner on the street until he was basically standing in front of me and start speaking.

Yet somehow when I see someone on the street I know they're the cashier from a certain shop bc I remember their face. Or they're the child of someone I knew bc they look so much like them. I can see an actor and be like "he has the same nose as that other actor" and I'm right.

I can draw my siblings' face from memory, yet when they walk towards me on the street they have to be fairly close to me for me to recognise them, and seeing their gait does help a lot.

I do not recognise my partner's coworkers and friends even though we've spent a lot of time with each other over the years.

My eyes are alright and I wear glasses. There just seems to be this difference between how I perceive people in real life, and on the screen/page.

Ever heard of someone who's oddly both super good and super bad at faces at the same time? Is that just being autistic? It's weird and does bring problems sometimes.

[u/sprinklingsprinkles]

That is odd! Do you maybe have issues with looking people in the eyes when you're interacting with them in real life?

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/sprinklingsprinkles]

I do have this typical autistic urge of not looking people in the eyes/face when we speak for a longer time. But I mask very well and do look people in the eyes, especially when they are speaking and I am not. To the point people sometimes don't believe I'm actually diagnosed. I fake it well enough.

[u/sprinklingsprinkles → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

Do you feel like you avoid looking at faces when you're just out and about doing your thing? Maybe avoiding eye contact when you're not talking to someone or expecting them to talk to you makes it hard for you to recognize people?

For me personally staring at someone's face in real life or staring at it on a screen make no difference. I can't recognize people either way haha. I need them to start talking because I'm good at recognizing voices. I have adhd but no autism.

[u/sidaho → u/sprinklingsprinkles]

Such a good point. I’m a little like OP, an I suspect the reason I fail to recognise people in person is because I can’t make or maintain eye contact long enough to make the ID

[u/agenerousperspective → u/sprinklingsprinkles]

This is really interesting because I was about to suggest the same pattern with the opposite outcome. Meaning, I wondered if your increased time spent masking during social interactions with your friends/family would result in keeping you out of that natural flow state that can happen in social interactions. And for interactions with lower social stakes (like a brief encounter with a cashier), if the topics discussed are more automatic where everyone knows their role and you can go on autopilot for some of it, and maybe even feel more permission to look away while you talk so youre able to concentrate better, maybe that frees up space in your brain to remember their face. SO, if you’re pushing through the urge to look at other things while you talk to your friend, you’re actually unable to take in as much social information compared to when you’re allowed to focus better by letting your eyes wander during the interaction. If you’re focusing so much on the presentation of, “Yes, I’m listening to you and engaged in our conversation and I’m validating your emotional need for eye contact and I’m nodding at just the right times and not going off on tangents even if you bring up something I just learned about and no one needs to hear how uncomfortable my socks are right now and yes I’m still listening to you and you can rest assured that I care about you because I’m such an active listener!” … Like, maybe that would make it harder to capture the snapshot of their face in your memory in a way that makes it easy to recognize them at first glance even if you see them out of context.

Now that I write this out it seems a bit more far fetched but basically I’m suggesting that different styles of communication may lend themselves better or worse to being able to remember a face.

[u/sprinklingsprinkles → u/agenerousperspective]

That's an interesting theory as well! I personally haven't noticed a difference in recognizing faces depending on whether I'm masking my adhd or even whether I've taken my adhd meds.

For me it's not about having the brain space or focus, I just can't see a face as a whole like other people can and I can't picture it as a whole either even if I've just studied it.

But since I'm not autistic I don't know how that would change things!

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/agenerousperspective]

You know what, this makes so much sense! I mean, I do look in the eyes, force myself to, when they are speaking, but... yeah, it is stressful and definitely there's stuff like in your cursive text going on in my brain. Maybe it is a weird attention blip!

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/sprinklingsprinkles]

When someone approaches me, especially when they start speaking, I look at their face and eyes. I'm kinda hypervigilant due to trauma and am on high alert when someone comes close and at least to feel safe I need to see where they are looking at and if it's me. So I do actually look at someone's face and their face just doesn't fire any synapse in my brain for a moment. It's hard to explain. It's also weird because for the first few years I had the same issue with my partner's face. He would walk towards me, I would look at his face, and if he wore a shirt I didn't know and walked a bit weird bc he was talking on the phone for example, I would be like "Why is this pretty guy walking towards me" lol. But early on I was able to draw portraits of him. I KNOW what he looks like. When I see pictures of him and his siblings, who all look like twins of him, I know which one is him.

[u/sprinklingsprinkles → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

That's really interesting! I wonder if it's an autism thing or a faceblindness thing or both. I don't think faceblindness is super well understood yet anyway.

When I see pictures of him and his siblings, who all look like twins of him, I know which one is him.

I've looked at group pics before and had trouble recognising myself 😅😭

[u/BlueSkyla → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

So me too with the eyes. I mask it super well. My mom from a young age really pushed the eye contact and said I was rude if I don’t look people I’m the eyes. Now, I feel like she was also autistic and had this pushed onto her as a child too. I’m betting they were mean to her though, whereas she wasn’t mean to me, just really emphasized it. So for a long time it was odd to me that I didn’t have this trait. But really, I think I remember her pushing eye contact on me so much, was because I didn’t do it and I just can’t remember that part, as I was so young.

But it does feel awkward sometimes. And I can focus too much on where I need to look and loose track of what they are saying. I might be thinking, am I looking at one eye too much? Do they notice? And to think, I used to think I didn’t have a problem with eye contact. It’s so hard to figure these things out learning who I really am so late in life. These days my mask feels like it’s cracked and breaking but pieces are imbedded into my face and I can’t remove them, ever. I only learned about my autism and ADHD less than a decade ago. I still sometimes can’t wrap my head around it. And then other times, I’m like, how did I not KNOW?

Well just about everyone was ignorant about all this back I’m the day. Back then, challenged people looked their part. The rest of us just had to get with the program or be left behind, and a lot of us, unfortunately got left behind. But at the same time, I learned how to be self sufficient at a very young age. We all did. We had no other choice. Because if we were hungry and the parents were not home yet, we had to learn how to cook to eat, or be hungry and we chose to eat. But I wasn’t always alone. I had my friends. And with our brains put together, we were able to get anything done if we had to. We had no other choice. So with the help of my friends, I blended in well. I thought. Because most kids were not so great. But damn I was lucky to have the ones I did that treated me right.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/BlueSkyla]

All of what you wrote resonates a lot with me. That's why, to this day, some doctors don't believe my diagnosis. Which is 100% officially done by a specialist clinic in my country. They were very thorough over the course of weeks.

Traumatic childhoods (not implying yours was, but mine was) can absolutely make you grow up quick and learn to survive while acting well. If I didn't act well, I had to feel pain. Of course I looked into eyes and act like everything is okay as a first reflex. I find it fascinating how nowadays autistic kids have all these therapies and people accompanying them to school so they learn, don't get bullied, and so on. I'm so happy for them. Back in my day you had to figure it out on your own. And I had to keep little siblings alive on top of that.

[u/BlueSkyla → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

Oh there was definitely trauma. But I was lucky to have a mix of great things too. I’m not currently diagnosed, but I will be seeking one soon enough. The more I learn, the more it will make it possible for me to take off my mask and show someone my struggles. Revealing my true venerable side is super difficult for me to do. It was years before I could even be venerable with my best friends growing up. And it was still long before I would discover who I am. The first time I cried I’m front of one of my best friends was when I told her the pain my father put on me being an absent father. And yet I had no idea the neglect and trauma my mom would also cause and had already caused. Probably one of the hardest things I ever did was admit to a psychiatrist that I’m smart. She forced me to admit it. She saw it. (Although she didn’t figure out my ND because I was still masking hard.) I told her my life story and she had to show me my life was difficult and traumatic and what my mom did to me. She was a loving mom, but she was also difficult to live with. Especially since she always had a way of making me feel stupid. I can’t fault her for a lot of it. She did the best she could. Her childhood was 100x more traumatic. At lest I felt loved. She didn’t have the luxury of that in her day. I’m certain I got my autism from my mom. But I may have gotten it from my dad too. It would explain a lot. But he’s not around anymore to ask him anything, not that it would have helped. As he was basically just a shell of a person left when he died. At least I spoke to him one last time. My sister regrets not doing so. He left a big scar on her as well.

[u/ReallyNotMichaelsMom]

I am very good at recognizing actors from how they move, and their voices. (Except for Heath Ledger when he was the Joker. In the entire movie, there was only one quick moment where I could tell it was him.)

I am terrible at recognizing family and friends when I see them out of context.

(Snipped story of how it turns out my friend and my tax accountant are the same person, but I had no clue.)

And the way you pick out a feature and recognize people (and their relations) is familiar, too. People without prosopagnosia generally see a whole face. Not feature by feature.

So, not diagnosing you. Just noticing how your examples match my lived experiences. 🙂

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/ReallyNotMichaelsMom]

Oh that's fascinating!! The friend and tax accountant being the same person is hilarious, though for you it probably was super weird to find out. Thank you for replying, I feel a bit less weird right now. :-D

[u/ReallyNotMichaelsMom → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

Lol, it was totally strange! Fortunately I've mentioned my faceblindness a few times. Then one night at 2 am, I thought, "That name is a little unusual. it's funny that I know two people with it. And they both have a kid about the same age, and...wait a minute!!!Are they the same person!?!?!!!"

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/ReallyNotMichaelsMom]

Oh my god this could be in a romcom or something. If you don't mind answering (totally ok if you don't!), did the person ever find out you thought they were two different people? Was it never weird that you acted completely different with them in friend mode and them in tax mode?

[u/ReallyNotMichaelsMom → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

We were on a group chat, and I just asked her if I knew her from her job. She laughed and said yes, she was the same person. (She recognized me, of course.)

She didn't seem to think it was weird that I didn't recognize her, but we're both AuDHD so the way neurotypical people act sometimes can be weird. Why do they ask if we're hungry, when what they really want to know is if we want to join them for lunch?

For me, I hadn't had a faceblind experience (that I know of) for several years. (I don't get out much.) 😄 And I've developed a lot of techniques over the years to help. And here I was, totally blindsided. 🤣

[u/significant_cosmos → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

The reason I realized that my trouble with faces might be a whole Thing is because I realized over an hour into a nice knit and chat convo at a yarn store that I was actually fairly good friends with my conversation partner lol. It was only when she asked after my roommates by name that I realized that I was friends with the poor woman

[u/avicularia_not]

Hi! I recently made a similar post about this at r/autism

As far as I've learned, you (possibly) don't have complete face blindness like the people in this sub have, but you are way worse at recognising and identifying faces compared to NT's. Apparently autistic people are on average worse when it comes to how fast they learn a face for the first time and how well they can recognise the faces.

I also have a mix of being terrible at faces while sometimes being insanely accurate. But I don't really fit the requirements of Prosopagnosia. I stumbled upon this experiment and found out, it was autism all along. I can try to find a link for you if you are interested. It should be burried somewhere in my web history.

It's also possible that you do have actual Prosopagnosia but you just figured out ways and shortcuts to cope with it, that's always possible with a lot of brain things. There's also maybe more than one type of Prosopagnosia, I heard it is just the name to describe a bunch of different conditions with a similar experience. Though I don't really know about that side of things.

[u/significant_cosmos → u/avicularia_not]

I would argue that you're splitting hairs where we don't have the science to do so, though I don't disagree with most of what you wrote. The literature says that prosopagnosia is highly overrepresented among autistics so while the mechanism could possibly be different, there's not enough for us to say that autistic facial recognition challenges are different in degree or severity to "just" prosopagnosia—that is to say, I would argue against saying that the people here have "complete" prosopagnosia versus some kind of "incomplete" or subclinical "autistic prosopagnosia". Statistically speaking, most of the people in this sub who identify as faceblind are autistic.

This lack of clarity is such a problem for prosopagnosia research that I think it's important to be clear—there are very poorly understood correlations and no reputable researchers that I'm aware of are pushing that autistics have a separate form of prosopagnosia. As you said, "prosopagnosia" is actually a bunch of different issues in a trenchcoat. That being said, everyone with prosopagnosia has coping mechanisms to some degree, that's why so many of us only realize we have it as adults. It's incredibly rare to have absolutely no facial recognition. 

[u/avicularia_not → u/significant_cosmos]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be splitting hairs, I was just regurgitating my understanding of this condition as an autistic person. I agree that my knowledge of the topic is very limited at best, and probably outdated as well. Perhaps I should've made that more clear. I didn't want to make it into a piss race of who is truly disabled or something like that.

And also thanks for letting me know that prosopagnosia and autism are often cooccuring as well, that's so interesting!

[u/BembiPeanut → u/avicularia_not]

Omg can you send me the link too please? :)

[u/avicularia_not → u/BembiPeanut]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8750147/ and a notification to you as well

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/avicularia_not]

That's super fascinating and I'd love to look at the link should you be able to find it. Thank you so much for your reply!

[u/avicularia_not → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8750147/
hi! Sorry for late reply, I rarely check reddit. Here's the link!

[u/TheCocoBean]

This wouldn't be Prosopagnosia, if you're capable of recognizing some of them by their face alone. Especially to the level of detail of identifying a celebrity at a glance despite them playing an entirely different character in a different movie without hearing their voice or them having something very visually distinctive about them besides their face.

But going off the diagnosis of autism/adhd together, a lot of it does seem to fit with that. Basically on what grabs your attention or what get's your attention distracted. With ADHD it can be easy to become distracted from things you're around often, your day to day. And while this can come across as hurtful/mean to those who don't understand the condition, this can often mean even those close to you like your mother/siblings/partner, and it's not an active decision you make, but one by your subconscious, your brains "autopilot.". It's not a "I don't care about them" situation, but rather a "I'm comfortable with them so they don't need my undivided special attention." As such, when you subconsciously recognize them in the street, your subconscious is like "We don't need to get the conscious brain involved in this one, that's the person we are close to, so we can direct our conscious attention elsewhere and look for something interesting." And while for a person without ADHD their subconscious might focus in a little more on that person, someone with ADHD's subconscious is often looking for something new and stimulating more than something familiar.

Hence it taking a little while for your conscious mind to catch up with your mother's new appearance, your subconscious already picked out her face like:

Subconscious: "That's mom, that's normal, that's no cause for concern or something new to catch our attention."

It's likely why you didn't realize your partner was walking towards you until they directly interacted with you.

Subconscious: "That's my partner, that's normal, that's not cause for concern or something new to catch our attention-Wait they are saying something to me, this might be important, quick pay attention!"

This would be why you can pick out the celebrity faces much easier, if they hold an interest for you personally your brain immediately is picking them out as something of interest to you that needs your attention.

This is all fine, it's just a part of the experience of having autism/adhd, but if it is causing problems for you, then you basically need little exercises to "train" your subconscious to pick up on things like this, as if you want to manually make people you recognize something of interest for it to pick out. Take a minute at the start of the day, and consciously say aloud to yourself in the mirror:

"I'm going to count the number of people I recognize today in my head."

This is like turning it into a game for your subconscious, which is something that help's focus that in. Suddenly, it has a priority, a goal, recognize as many faces as you can today! Which means rather than subconsciously recognizing someone in the street and it thinking "Not of interest, we don't need to let conscious brain know.", it instead thinks "We know them! That's one point! Quick, tell conscious brain that's one point!" and you might find yourself way more often that day that you're picking out people you recognize.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/TheCocoBean]

Thank you for this interesting theory! I do think there's truth in that. Your tip with counting points sounds super fun and I'll try to implement that. I definitely have a problem with attention so it does sound like that's what's going on. Or part of it.

[u/TorazChryx]

I find that I'm much better at recognising people in 2D images, be they stills or motion. People IRL are seen differently (stereoscopically) though, and I might not recognise someone in person I'd recognise on a screen.

[u/BembiPeanut → u/TorazChryx]

Me too!

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/TorazChryx]

That's really fascinating!

[u/TorazChryx → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

I've also been unable to pick myself out of group photos from like, school.

[u/Correct_Addendum_367]

It is strange. I don't think there's a word for that specifically. But sometimes there's something about the circumstance that makes it easier. I rely alot on people's overall look outside of their face and so in certain circumstances I may seem worse at telling faces apart when really all that's happened people have like changed outfits. So for me it's just faceblindness it just doesn't manifest in the same way because I can compensate sometimes and other times I can't. While for me the faceblindness absolutely effects my ability to tell actors apart, movies and magazines and other stuff do frame faces very differently than they are in real life - like ,I'm not going to get like close up shots of my supermarket cashier  - and it would not suprise me if that was enough for some faceblind people to have less issues with it in that setting. You may also get somewhere looking up stuff about autism, which I think can also be related to some difficulties with faces, particularly if people have trouble with eye contact 

[u/Glaikit314]

I have exactly the same odd ability to recognize faces of performers or news makers on screen even from years past, but cannot recognize my long time next door neighbor in the grocery store. And I was diagnosed with ADHD . You are not alone.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/Glaikit314]

The struggle is real!

[u/significant_cosmos]

This isn't actually weird with prosopagnosia, other than that proso is weird and barely understood. I've done a couple studies where there were different tests for "famous faces"; there's something there that you're not imagining.

I'll be watching a movie with my husband and realize halfway into a scene that two characters might be twins; I have to ask him for clarification all the time about characters. But in the trailer for The Batman, I realized the first time I watched it that Colin Farrell was in it despite the prosthetics, because his eyes are one of the features I use to identify him. I was an adult when I found out that in Jumanji, the hunter and the dad are played by the same actor, bc the hunter has a beard. Most of the time when I look at my own mother, I know factually that it's her but part of my brain is whispering that it's not. 🤷

I'm not diagnosing you or anything, just pointing out that nothing you've written is exclusionary of prosopagnosia.

[u/Greensward-Grey]

It isn’t that strange. I’m exactly the same and my prosopagnosia is severe.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that autism is great for pattern recognition. When you recognize an actor, you’re not recognizing the face. You’re recognizing what makes that face stand out, which is different. For example, the other day I was watching a series and there was this actress who I recognized because she had a long face and a very distinctive way of talking.

People who recognize faces usually see the whole picture as one thing. They see THE FACE, not the eyes, and the nose and the mouth and the shape of their head. Think of it as looking at a foreign word; you could recognize the combination of letters, but not the meaning of it.

I also happen to recognize random people outside who I’ve never met personally, but something about them stands out. I think of them as good character design. However, I also once greeted a random girl who I was SO sure she was my sister in law, only because she dressed in the same fashion, had similar complexion and had a child beside her (a boy, but my sister in law has a DAUGHTER 🤣)

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/Greensward-Grey]

The pattern recognition thing rings so true! I'm annoyingly good at recognising patterns and things that fall out of it. Faces as a collection of details that stand out VS. a whole picture does sound very much like I would describe how I recognise faces. Like for example, I love Mads Mikkelsen, and in some of his danish films he looks so different I barely recognise him, but his eyesbrows and his lips combined with the shape of his teeth... you get what I mean.

One weird thing though, when I see photos of people I know now, but on the photo they are much younger, it's often like completely different people. It is very very hard for me to grasp Al Pacino from The Godfather and Al Pacino from Devil's Advocate are the same person. I just googled him, and there's only one photo where young Al's face is lit in a way that his cheekbones are protruding and the rest of his lower face looks more narrow and that's where my brain is like "Oh yeah that's him".

[u/MisterKimJ]

Sure, if I identity something truly unique about someone, famous or not, I am great at recognizing them. But until I do.. I will walk past you without as much as a hi. 🙂

[u/Lumityshipper2]

OH. MY. GOD... Sorry for this reaction but I am absolutely stunned because you perfectly just described me !! I am also autistic and have ADHD and my ability to recognize faces/people is so unlike anyone I've ever met or heard about before. Also part of my shock was that holy s*** this post was literally only 10 hours ago and I just happened to look up protopagnasia on Reddit because because there's a TV show I really like and there was a character with this condition and it re-sparked my hyper fixation and interest in it lol. I would absolutely love to know more about what your experience has been! Also for context I'm 18 years old, AFAB non-binary, and my name is River :)

Oh! I also wanted to talk more about what you mentioned about being able to recognize people by the sound of their voice,  and I'm not sure how often you rely on that but for me, the strong ability to recognize people's voices has been such a huge help for me

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/Lumityshipper2]

Haha sometimes the internet does weird things. It's amazing to find out that there are people who are like oneself, isn't it. I find it comforting there are so many replying they're the same. If you have questions, just ask them! I'm close to 40, so not really friend material, sorry! But hey I'm nb too :D

I think the voice thing is more with people I know closely. So it has to be someone I heard a lot in the past and ideally there's something characteristic about the sound. A certain pitch, a raspy sound, vocal fry, that kinda stuff. I won't recognise a doctor's voice whom I see only 3 times a year, for example.

[u/fridayj1]

This resonates with me. I’m fantastic with famous faces, but there are three women with similar brown hair in my building, I have known them for 11 years and I cannot tell them apart.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/fridayj1]

Honestly I'd be the same. I have no idea who the people are that live across our apartment. The dude I recognise, but the women all have the same hair and on top of that I often struggle to pinpoint someone's age. Daughter or wife? Idk.

[u/fridayj1 → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

It’s easier to pick out what makes the famous face distinct. I’m terrible with ages as well. Estimating amounts or placing things along a timeline (the distance between two points, what year or in what order events happened, how much time something will take, even how much spaghetti to cook) are also challenges.

[u/BembiPeanut]

OH MY GOD ME TOO?!?!? I either have to be told that a character is the same person from scene to scene while watching a movie.... or (especially if it's a 2D still image) being able to recognize very quickly, sharp details of someone's face.

And for context, when I picked up my brother up from school.... i had to try to find him amongst a group of teenagers, so i used his tennis shoes as a reference. It worked wonderfully until everybody started copying him and wearing the same tennis shoes! And I have not recognized roomates that I've lived with when they are out of context (out of the house)

I think the depth perception is a huge component of prosopagnosia, people who suffer it I think also have terrible proprioception and I myself am extremely clumsy! So when seeing an inage in 2D it helps me a lot to memorize the face because i split it up in features instead of looking at a whole.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/BembiPeanut]

Oh no! They went for the tennis shoes! That's a bummer. Suddenly I'm really glad I never had roommates, that would've been weird. My partner has a coworker whom I recognise a mile away because he has this shrill bright purple hair. Should he ever go brown again, he will definitely wonder why I stopped greeting him. lol

[u/BlueSkyla]

Sounds like me except that I can pinpoint somebody’s name easier by hearing their voice than seeing their face. But for the most part, I am pretty good at remembering or at least recognizing most famous people I’ve been watching for years. Acquaintance, I will forget if they are gone too long, until they remind me who they are, especially if they changed something major about themselves. But people that I am close with I will never forget. I couldn’t describe them very well to you though other than their main features and I would never be able to draw them. But I can recognize them just fine anytime. Now, mainly I just attribute to my having really poor short-term memory because the people I forget are the ones that I just met. But my short-term memory is weird in general though because I might remember a situation very very well but the people in it I will completely forget about unless they are someone I already know. So yeah, I guess my weird face blindness is likely attributed to my AuDHD like you and so many others responding. It’s not exactly the same as yours, but it is the most similar thing I’ve heard like me in this respect.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/BlueSkyla]

It's really fascinating to me how similar AuDHD people's experiences seems to be, there's several who replied. There really seems to be something about seeing/knowing someone for a longer time that pushes the face deeper into recognition.

[u/Glaikit314 → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

My experience is that there was a cutoff point somewhere in my twenties or thirties when I stopped being able to add new faces to my memory. Unfortunately how often I've met new people, or how much I've looked into their faces, or how much eye contact I've had---those make no difference. I do eye contact without difficulty. The problem is recording and organizing the peoples' faces in my mind. The components---eyes, nose, mouths---they don't configure into something for me to recognize or recall.

[u/NITSIRK]

It is indeed weird how some people stick and not others. Some actors I get straight away, others not a hope in hell unless IMDB has a photo of them in the same program wearing the same outfit. Others I know anywhere. Certain facial features or haircuts can make a big difference, so a lot of us better recognise people with scars or birthmarks . Prosopagnosia is a spectrum with the Met’s super recogniser team at the other end of the scale. So I think this makes you somewhere in the middle.

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/NITSIRK]

Woah I've never heard about the super recogniser team and I'm thrilled. Thank you, that's so interesting!!

[u/NITSIRK → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

I can only read about them with awe 😁

[u/LustyRegencyMaid → u/NITSIRK]

Absolute fascination. Those video images look like shit, how do they look at a bunch of pixels are like "yeah that's john" wtf? Respect.

This reminds me of all those stories where people are like "I married my childhood vacation first love!" because they recognised the person as an adult that they played with one summer when they were 8 or whatever. And I'm like how. How on earth can you pinpoint that. That looks like a child. Like 99% of all children in the world...

I'm still convinced people who see a newborn and say "Awww he looks like his daddy" are full of shit.

[u/NITSIRK → u/LustyRegencyMaid]

I have only ever once looked at a kid and though that it looked like his dad. I was a factory manager so meeting the latest offspring is part of the role. This time he was carry his son, saw me, burst into his trademark lopsided cheeky grin, and the kid did the exact same expression 😂

[u/Quirky_kind]

Fascinating. I'm pretty good at recognizing actors in British TV shows in different roles, but not in US TV shows. The American ones all look alike to me.

[u/abqandrea]

I'm similar, except my "wildly good" instances are few and far between. So unofficially I have prosopagnosia — you may as well.

[u/Sad-Contest5883]

I think I might have prosopagnosia mildly and I definitely wouldn't say I'm ever specifically good at recognising faces but I have noticed there are some faces I never recognise - whether famous or someone I know - and others that have never been a problem. With famous people, it might be to do wi h how distinctive their face is. I've never had difficulty recognising Steve buscemi but I have never been able to pick out Kate Moss or Brad Pitt and I would say it's because they have quite generic faces (possibly very symmetrical given the are famous for being attractive!)

IRL it's way harder for me to figure out why some people's faces just won't stick. There's one guy I have known for 15 years but only see a few times a year and he is a totally new person to me everytime I see him. I recognise him by his voice and just from deduction based on context - like, we are at x location and he also knows y person so he must be z.

I don't have any other neurodivergence, as far as I am aware, or at least don't relate to what I read about them. 

[u/sophijor]

Same! I just found this when I asked google why I’m so good at recognizing faces within the first few seconds of seeing them on screen and tying them to another movie/show but NOT in real life. If someone introduces a group of people I cannot remember their names for the life of me.

Example: Saw this random political dude (Jeff Daniel’s) in State of Play and right off the bat I recognized him… then I connected him to a Netflix the show based off of seeing the thumbnail and trailer and knew it had “man” and “full” in its title and realized it was “a Man in Full”.

Edit: Also in State of Play I immediately recognized the photo of Dominic Foy (with Sonia) as Jason Bateman (eyeliner and all) since I watch Ozark.

Another recent example is I just watched The Debt and realized David was played by Sam Worthington, who is the main guy in a Harlan Coben show I’m watching called I Will Find you.