Trouble Recognizing Faces?

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look up "prosopagnosia" it is a neurological/developmental phenomenon that appears in about 2 percent of the population, causing us to struggle to recognize individual faces. There is a group with more information also, "faceblind.org" which is the official prosopagnosia research center page. There are even self tests you can take.
I learned a couple years after my very late ASD diagnosis that I also have prosopagnosia and aphantasia. It has been a lot to sort, but a huge relief to finally understand why I struggle where others seem to do some things with ease.

When I was in college at the age of 16, a certain lady fancied me and notes were exchanged and it came to the date. I was to meet her outside the college gates. I was there for three quarters of an hour standing right next to her (She left after half an hour) and I didn't realize it was her. I assumed she had not turned up. I had ignored this lady partly trying to grab my attention standing in front of me. (She was shy so she didn't speak. I was also shy so I didn't talk to "Strange ladies!"
I had a right telling off from her friend the next day asking why I had set her up. I was so upset I didn't date again until I was 36 when a lady I was occasionally working with went out of her way to persuade me to go on a date with her. (Didn't last).

Oddly, issues arose when I met another WP member as she happened to be visiting the area where I lived and I had agreed to show her some of the local area for rhe day as a kind of tour guide, as I have been told I am good at that sort of thing!
I drove down to the place she was staying for the week which was near a beach and parked in the beach car park and waited. As we were good online friends I had seen a picture of her and also had a brief conversation on the phone to arrange things and to say "Hello" etc.
There she was walking towards me on the beach. As she came towards me I said something like "Good morning" or "Hello" etc to be polite and then as we were in conversation I opened the car door and she looked a bit confused, and in the background I could see a man with a dog also quickly walking towards us looking a bit concerned which was odd. Now just as she was about to sit down in my car when I told her to get in and held the door open for her, I turned and looked behind me and there was the lady I was supposed to be taking around for the day to see the area! Oops!

Here's the link for the facial recognition test.
https://v3.testmybrain.org/digitallab/?study=digitallab_s4_2025-06-02

And here's my result

Yes, facial recognition does seem to be one of the problems that folks on the spectrum have. Not all of us, but it's common enough to be one of the symptoms or manifestations of ASD.

For me, it was mostly a problem in my younger years...it seemed to have stopped in my mid-twenties. It was embarrassing on more than one occasion, in college/uni, when I either got a false positive or false negative. The latter is certainly more embarrassing, where the other person (being NT) can take offense and think you were snubbing them.

I think that folks like us tend to be more on the receiving end of being deliberately ignored and snubbed - something that was certainly true for me during my very early adult years of 18-22. But I digress...

In more recent years, I've had incredible recalls of facial memory, folks that I hadn't seen in many years, whom I recognized right away in settings where I didn't expect to see them. This has also been true the odd time in my early adult years, like when I was 20-21 I saw this girl get on the bus in another city and I hadn't seen her since I was 16-17, but I remembered her instantly.

I think it was 86% of those who have faceblindness are diagnosed as being on the spectrum, and the rest are undiagnosed autistic people, as prosopragnosia is one of those conditions that caused by autism which is logical if one thinks about it.

But do all faces do look the same even if you don't have face blindness

Well, believe it or not, the actor Brad Pitt admitted in an interview that he struggles with face blindness - and that people would accuse him of being rude, aloof, conceited, making it all up as an excuse, etc...

https://people.com/health/brad-pitt-det ... lieves-me/

I wouldn't bet my shirt on it but I reckon I could pick Brad Pitt out in a crowd

I scored 29. Pretyy good for someone having a hard time recognizing faces in real life.

I have a hard time recognizing faces of people I know when I see them in different settings.

I have a hard time when someone that I knew will say hello and I don't recognize who they are.

Thanks again to everyone for the replies. It's amazing how much relief I feel having an answer that isn't dementia related. I was doing some serious catastrophic thinking to the point where it was a part of a mental crash I took into depression about two years ago.

Not really.

Instead I have issues with encoding the memory of a face and recalling it to recognize someone.


I do not have this issue until around age 9.
It's probably one of the first things that puberty ruined for me.

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