Faces of Prosopagnisa

by Dora Raymaker · 2009-03-20 10:59:00 UTC
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four versions of a young white blond female, left to right and top to bottom: high contrast sepia tone, black and white, posterized, regular photoProsopagnosia (face blindness) is difficulty in recognizing people by their faces, even people who are well known such as a parent or spouse. Many people on the spectrum report prosopagnosia and there are claims that prosopagnosia is more prevalent in the autistic population than it is in some other groups (though I haven't seen any references to actual studies). Prosopagnisa is generally thought to be a brain thing because people can acquire it after a head injury or stroke.

A new MIT study on facial recognition (or lack thereof) in photographic negatives found that the structures around eyes seem to be important in facial recognition. The article that's been circulating about the study speculates,

Other studies have shown that people with autism tend to focus on the mouths of people they are looking at, rather than the eyes, so the new findings could help explain why autistic people have such difficulty recognizing faces, says Sinha.

I'd speculate further that anyone who has difficulty making sense of visual stimuli is likely to have trouble recognizing faces.

Joel Smith has written some informative articles about face blindness and some strategies for living with face blindness, from an autistic perspective.

Dora Raymaker
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