AS and difficulty recognising people?

[onegiantleap]

Hi,
does anyone have any experience of children with AS not recognising people?
My ds is 13, he has some difficulty recognising complex emotions, but I have also noticed he often confuses people he sees on tv/ in posters etc. For example he might swear that George Cole [not naming him but saying "that guy"] was in Doctor Who last week], when I know he wasnt.
Then we have to spend a length of time suggesting that it may have been him, or somebody that looked very much like him, etc.

He has never had a problem with familiar adults/children.

Interested to hear anyone else noticed this.

My ds is 8 and has AS. He has some difficulty with facial recognition and in seeing this in him i realise that I am the same. I don't have AS but I'm pretty sure I have dyspraxia and there are lots of crossovers between the conditions.

I have very poor facial recognition to the extent that I find it hard to follow the plot of films and embarrass myself.

I don't think I have ASD.

I guess there's always crossover...

ds1 doesnt often, based it on hair for years- ooooh theres so and so and only hair would match iykwim

he has learned after lots of practice

ds3 aint got a clue

I have poor facial recognation, not only with tv but with dh's family (we dont see them often and they all look simalar)

Dd1 (as) remembers evry face she has seen.

I would say i show a few as traits as does dh who has a terible memory.

Thank you for your prompt replies,
So sounds like this can be a problem not only for AS, but is for some.

ds1 (sorry should hav said) as / hfa dx

ds3 no dx but spectrum

Me now, I could fit on that spectrum no doubt but I have a photogrpahic memory for faces and convo's- often embarassinly long after other party ahs forgotten me

I am hopeless at recognising faces, often even of familiar people. I think the worst time was about three years ago, when we went up to visit my parents. My aunt (my mum's sister) was visiting as well. When I walked in the door I couldn't tell them apart and stood staring for about two minutes before my mum spoke .

I really struggle to recognise faces - its really embarrasing! Sometimes a face is familiar but I cannot place why - so react inappropriatly or rather dont react for fear of getting it wrong. I do not have As but I suspect I have dyslexia. I recognise animated faces, movements (like hand gestures, walking patterns) and voices - eventually but this is slow. My son who has autism is much better at recognising faces - he knows whos mummy is whos more than I do - between us we mostly manage!

Ds is 8 and has asd.

he has had the same classmates for 4 years now and gets them mixed up.

It has only been this last year or so that he hasn't gotten mixed up withmy brothers.

he really does struggle with names and faces.

DS aged 4 on spectrum, as yet no dx, seems to recognise people differently IYKWIM, he also notices hair, and also if we know a mother and child, and see them out together, he immediately recognises them both, but if we only see one, he doesn't seem able to place them.

DS1 has the same problem (ADHD+) he swears that Will Smith is the same guy as Morgan Freeman! And Annika hansen (seven of nine) is the same person as Jolene Blalock (T'pol from starTrek)... the only similarity usually is the gender!

I was led to believe it was something to do with Dyslexia... cant remember where i heard that tho.

Ah, now ds1 has dyslexia too but there are a lot of similarities between the two.

DS1 willr efer to a girl as 'the balck girl' and I'll be thinking he means someone when he means someone with a black dress and not related to skin tone at all. he's not wrong though- it's just he's not following our descriptive rules iyswim?

I also cannot tell the make of one car from another - not without studying them, anyway. Apart from minis and VW campers.
It astonishes me that other people can do this effortlessly.

Ds is 11 with Aspergers. He has just started secondary school and apart from the children he knows already from primary, he has only managed to pick out about 4 children.
He doesn't spend a lot of time looking at faces... they hold very little interest for him plus he tends to find it uncomfortable if they look back at him..so it can take him years to build up a 'picture' of a person.
He recognises a few of his teachers...but i imagine if they not in their normal rooms, he mostly wouldn't.
Must be very confusing for him.
He is brill with voices though! He will pick out the voices of cartoons really easily ...ie if the person who voices one character also voices another in a different cartoon then he can usually pick it up before the rest of us.

ASDs? Hubby can tell who's who, I can't.

Son at sports events? No idea which one is him.
Colleagues I've worked with for years, seen in a crowd? No idea who they are.
Friend in a shop? No clue which person was her.

I can recognise people I've known a long time if they're where I expect them to be, and I have time to think about it and they haven't put their hair up or worn dark glasses or turned sideways when I'm used to seeing them from the front.

Films and 'soap operas' are usually a mystery unless the Director has picked really different-looking people. There again, names are a mystery too, so reading a book about a load of different people is fairly meaningless as I can't remember which one was the tall dark handsome stranger and which one was the small blond rugged villain .

My life is rarely dull as a consequence, as it's one very long guessing game.

bullet123 about your mum and her sister! Lack of facial recognition skills runs in my family. My dad once travelled in the same tube carriage without recognising me. I can never spot the famous person or even older members of my own family in snaps of them as children. I have problems spotting DS in a crowd as so many kids in his school seem to have the same colour hair and similar dress sense. And I walk past acquaintances frequently because they are in the 'wrong' environment. Very good on shoes, handbags and content of conversations though. DS appears to be the same (he is NT).

Ooh peachy, J does that too - the 'green boy' and the 'red girl'. Remembers cars too - but not really faces (autism dx)

DS1 is trying to differentiate cars atm, keeps asking- I thnk the top trumps set we bopught whena way alerted him to the fact they differ. So must have been an issue there we hadn't noticed!

peachy- dd likes to differentiate cars, she remembers the different badges on them and offten says 'thats the same make as our car'.

Arabica, you should have had redheads like me very handy for spotting in crowds!

Hello - I started a thread about this early September (facial blindness and ASD on tv). Myself and my 2 boys (both ASD) were affected. There is a link with ASD. Facial blindness can have a huge effect on socialisation and emotion recognition. Screening and treatment is available in the UK from some opticians. There is lots of info on Ian Jordan's website (and he treated us on NHS).Please get your kids screened.
Stressa.

my ds (2.10) calls all his friends by the same name. i'm not quite sure if it is because he doesn't recognise them facially or that he doesn't understand that they all have different names.