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Doubutsu
Raven
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17 Feb 2012, 11:48 am

I'm undiagnosed, but I found what asperger was while searching for face blindness in google.

I can see faces (I'm not apperceptive) but I find difficult to remember and describe them, once my mum asked me about how a girl looked like, I said she has two eyes,a nose and a mouth, I didn't realize how stupid it sounded until I heard myself saying it, my mum thought I was joking. I would like to find some book about classifiyng facial features. Sometimes I forgot making eye contact, but I still have problems remembering faces if I look at them with the intention of remembering.
I have been like this since I can remember, here are some examples:

1) I was with my grandmother at shopping, we payed for a toy and the seller went to look for something. I didn't remember how she looked like, I was afraid she didn't come back and I had lost my money, fortunatelly she came back and talked with us.

2) When I'm at a restaurant, I never know which was my waiter, because they dress the same and use to have the same hairstyle.

3) My mother used to pick me up from school, once she changed her hairstyle and I couldn't find her at the exit, after some minutes I noticed there was a woman wearing her clothes and my sister's bag, I was unsure so I stared at her for about 5 minutes, then my sister took my hand and asked why I was staring at my mother.

4) One guy started talking me in the street in a friendly way, so I supposed he was someone whose face I had forgotten, I knew I was wrong when he asked me for buying a religious magazine.

5) I was coming back home and I saw a girl with a poodle, I was looking at the dog and then the girl say me "hello" with an angry voice, I say hi back unsure(maybe she got angry because she doesn't like people watching her dog?) and continued my way to home. Days later my mother told me that the neighbor's sister was offended because I didn't say hi to her when we meet, then I knew she was the girl with the poodle.

6) I have problems making friends at college because I don't remember who was the one I sat by the day before, but I made some because once I sat by a guy with colored eyes and I could find him the day after (I looked for green eyes until someone greeted me), then he showed me his friends.

7) I've recently became an assistant at one of my college's courses, I had to help some group of students with programming. One group asked me some questions, I answered and then went to lunch, when I came back I wanted to know if they needed more help, but there were a lot of students and I couldn't recognize them, I just stayed in corner looking at everyone waiting for someone to approach me...

8 ) Sometimes I'm not sure if someone is who I think who is, I spent 15 minutes trying to notice if one guy was my boyfriend, he wasn't.

9) I also have problems watching movies, I use to recognize the characters by their hair or skin colors, when there are for example two blonde women I have problems knowing who is who. That happens to me in real life too, two of my friends at school looked the same for me at the firsts week because they both have the same hair color (now I notice how diferent they are)



shartora
Blue Jay
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17 Feb 2012, 1:11 pm

I'm not bad with recognising a face but DO have a problem matching a name to it. That comes eventually after repeated exposure to that face and hearing the name several times. Then it sticks.

Or not :(


_________________
Your Aspie score: 146 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 69 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie

So the neurologist was correct.


Ookla
Deinonychus
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17 Feb 2012, 3:24 pm

I try to remember one distinguishing feature about a person. A mole, a scar, an unusual hairstyle, something. (Of course, if they have the mole removed or change their hairstyle, that doesn't help much.) When I worked in a convenience store, I used to identify some people by the cars they drove. Cars models are easier for me to remember than faces. I'd think: "Okay, a black Volkswagen Passat with a cracked windshield and an Obama sticker in the rear side window. That's Kirsten, who works across the street at Applebee's." With repeated exposure, the person's face will finally stay in my memory, but it takes time.

But working in retail jobs definitely helped me learn to read people's emotions. It's fairly easy for me now, after years of studying customers' faces.



MaxPower
Blue Jay
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17 Feb 2012, 4:44 pm

I don't know if I'm quite "face blind" but I at least have something similar. A face I've really learned I'll probably never forget, but it takes a while. I was around a guy (with some other friends) all day on Saturday, and on Monday night I didn't recognize him until I was reminded who he was because the context was completely different. Happens all the time, skiing for example - I can be around and talking to people all day, when the helmet and goggles and jacket comes off I have no idea who I'm looking at.



matt
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18 Feb 2012, 12:23 am

Many times I have been in situations in public in which people who knew who I was would come up to me and start talking to me, and I didn't know who they were. I remember it happening at a grocery store a few years ago when a person who would have been considered the closest approximation I had to a friend in high school started talking to me, addressing me by name, but never gave any kind of indication who he was. I spent most of the rest of the night trying to determine who this person was and why he knew my name and was addressing me in familiarity.

I remember another time when I was in college and a sociology professor whose class I was taking saw me walking with my mom in a Sears. She started to talk to me and I had no idea who she was until she started talking about sociology. Encountering a person you have dealt with while with another person is worse, because they expect that you will introduce them, but if you don't know who one of them is, it is terrifying.

I can remember people if they have exceptionally distinctive characteristics, things about them which are very unusual or abnormal, like unusual hairdos, or if they dress in ways which are very uncommon, but when that is changed, I don't know who they are. Exactly as it's been described by others here, it's really bad when you're at work and you've interacted with someone before, and although you remember the interaction you completely don't remember what the person looked like.

I've actually gotten a co-worker in trouble before, because I talked to my supervisor's secretary to ask her to place a call to get something repaired in my office. The repair person, an employee there, had come to my office and said hi to me, and I, not knowing who they were, didn't communicate with them. They left, and hours later I was asked by my supervisor's secretary whether the person had come to talk to me, and I said no. I wasn't trying to get them in trouble. I just didn't know what they looked like, regardless of having interacted with them before.

If people of similar physical characteristics(weight, skin color, hair color and clothing) talk to me within close periods of time, I'll often not realize that they're different people.

When watching television or movies, if there are two characters who have similar physical characteristics, I'll often get them confused. I watch shows about crime, and sometimes I think that the same person is the criminal and the good guy, and it's only when they actually interact do I realize who each character is, and from that point on I notice some distinguishing characteristic to separate them. But if the antagonist and the protagonist are similar, like two light-haired men, two light-haired women, two dark-haired men, or two dark-haired women, I often get them confused.

If I have repeatedly interacted with a person over a long period of time, like years, I would like to think that I have some ability to remember their face, but sometimes I've even had trouble recognizing family members. I remember one time when I was a child and I was getting off a plane after visiting my dad. I didn't recognize my own mom. Nothing about her appearance had changed significantly while I was gone. Thankfully she recognized me and my sister recognized her. I didn't mention it to them, because I knew that it would seem odd. I only see my sister a few times per year now, and I often don't recognize her, even though she does look somewhat distinctive.



dianthus
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18 Feb 2012, 1:16 am

I'm not sure about this but I think mine might be more of a memory storage/retrieval issue than actual face blindness. Many times I remember a person's face, and I realize that I do know them but I just don't have any idea who they are or where I know them from. My memory is very dependent on context, and when I see people outside of a familiar context I get totally confused.

Other times I just flat out don't remember people at all. It is not a situation where I know who they are and just can't put a name with a face. I just don't remember seeing them or talking to them before at all. This does not happen with people I have any significant connection with, it only happens with people I've met in passing or had very brief or insignificant interactions with. And maybe part of the problem is that I consider a lot of interactions with people to be very insignificant, probably more so than other people do. I don't place much importance on them so I don't hold that information in memory very well.

I work in sales and it's a daily struggle to remember people and figure out who they are. I travel to different places and often run into people in a different place than I saw them before so that makes it even harder. It's very awkward but I have stopped feeling bad about it. I do my best with it and that's all I can do. I can't help it if people feel slighted by it.

I am very good at recognizing faces if I know them, but it takes me a long time to learn a person's face. I don't have a good memory for details so picking out a distinguising feature doesn't help at all. I remember people more when I get a "feeling" for who they are.



kazz43
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19 Feb 2012, 12:08 am

Silver_Meteor wrote:
Face blindness means you just can't remember names with faces very well. It's embarassing.


i get that, i work in a busy clinic and i often 'forget' faces even when it's me that's booked them into clinic! or i look around the room and cant remember who people are!



Lynners
Raven
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19 Feb 2012, 12:16 am

I have this, and I can't remember faces.

I don't know if it's related to poor working memory or the fact that I don't look at people, or both. But it's frustrating nonetheless.



kazz43
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19 Feb 2012, 12:26 am

Joe90 wrote:
I don't have faceblindness. I only have difficulties spotting people because I don't look at people - I look down or away from anyone's faces (unless I know them). I have a fear of being looked at by others, so I look away so that I don't catch anyone looking at me. But it's not good when you end up walking straight past relatives and friends.


that happens to me a fair bit too