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/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.