“Everyone knows Jeannie; she just doesn’t know them.”
That was the common phrase I heard in high school. A constant stream of hugs, smiles, and waves
filled my days. I never understood how so many people that I didn’t know, knew
me.
Prosopagnosia, also known as “facial agnosia” or
“face-blindness,” is a neurological disorder that makes facial recognition
difficult or impossible. Two thirds of autistic children and adults have some
degree of face-blindness. I live among those numbers.
Do I know you? That is
the question that runs through my head when someone I don’t recognize approaches
me in public. They call me by name, ask about my children, my parents, and my
work—I know I should know this person, but I do not.
When my husband and I were first married we attended a very
large church in Brooklyn, NY where I often spoke to people having no idea who
they were. I didn’t think there was
anything wrong with me. I just figured
that in such a large church I never ran into the same person twice.
Being greeted by hugs and kisses from strangers has always made
me uncomfortable; I don’t like to be touched. To add to my discomfort the odd
looks these strangers gave me when I introduced myself was unnerving. When people approached us to talk, I assumed
that my husband knew them. We talked for a while, they left, and my husband
would say, “You know them, I introduced you last week.” You did?
I met the same people at church, each Sunday, talked with them,
and still did not recognize them the following week. It’s no wonder they looked at me like I was a
lunatic when I introduced myself, yet again.
When the same scene played itself out over and over again, I
began to believe what I had been told my entire life. I was a lazy, absent-minded, self-absorbed
air-head, who didn’t care enough about people to remember them. Or—I was stuck
up, obnoxious, too good for anyone, and just ignored people; nothing could have
been further from the truth.
The first time I read about Face-blindness, I was stunned. I had another one of those “ah ha” moments.
The moments were I had to look back at my life with new eyes, evaluating it
through the lens of Autism.
It took 38 years for me to be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome
(AS), a form of high functioning Autism—38 years of confusing experiences.
When I was a child AS was not a known diagnosis in the United States.
Although, well known in Europe for more than twenty years at the time, it only
became a viable diagnosis in the U.S. in 1994; three years after I was out of
high school, and two years after I’d dropped out of college the first time
around.
What is wrong with me? Why do I have trouble recognizing faces?
We do not see with our eyes, we “see” with our brains. All of us—with or without Autism see with our
brains. Our eyes take in a snapshot but it is our brains that process all the
information in the photo. It makes sense of all the patterns, categorizes them,
and stores them for later use (recognition).
I fail to recognize familiar faces, but I never fail to
recognize a tree, or a cat, or the shapes of clouds. Why?
A number of theories have arisen to answer this question. Maybe because we tend to not look people in
the eye, or focus on their faces, we have a hard time remembering them. It is
said that autistics tend to be socially uninterested—that we don’t care enough
to remember people.
Could it be an issue of weak central coherence?
Those with weak central coherence tend to focus on details but
lose track of, or don’t perceive the whole. A tendency to focus on minute
details, a portion of the face or specific feature, without taking in the whole
picture could be partially responsible for many autistics having have
difficulty with facial recognition. All
of these theories seem viable; however, I believe there is more to it than
that.
Facial recognition is isolated in the right temporal lobe in the
“fusiform face area.” Non-facial recognition happens on the left side of the
brain. In other words, all other
details, pieces, and patterns are processed on the left side of the brain.
Why does this matter? Autistics tend to do fairly well on
pattern recognition tests—significantly better than their neuro-typical
counterparts, but do poorly on facial recognition tests. The opposite is true
for neuro-typical people who perform very well on facial recognition test, but
do poorly in pattern recognition. In the autistic brain it seems that the
“fusiform face area” does not function the way other people’s do.
This could explain why I
wouldn’t recognize you if you stood on your head—or would I? Tests showed that
autistics were able to recognize faces that they viewed upside down.
Researchers found that the circuitry that recognizes faces only works on faces
that are right side up. Upside down
faces are routed to the left side of the brain to be processed like any other image.
The upside down faces processed like patterns, and autistics recognized those
facial patterns.
“How did you know it was
me?” a friend asked pulling her mask from her face.
Costume parties, for me, are like any other social gathering. If
I knew you well, I recognized you. It did not matter what you used to cover
your face. I recognized the contour of my friend’s hands, her ring, the shoes
we bought at the mall that summer, the way she stood, and swished her head back
and forth when she talked. I spotted her
from across the room, without hearing her say a word, or
knowing what costume she was wearing.
Most people rely on facial features to recognize someone they
know. I’ve always wondered why bank robbers wore ski masks, but did not
disguise the rest of the body. And it was ridiculous that in superhero movies
no one recognized their loved ones because they wore a mask over their face. Don’t all people rely on other details to
recognize people they know?
When I think of my brother, I can form a mental picture of his
face in my mind. I have no problem recognizing people who I know well. But I can also bring up just as sharp mental
picture of his hands, or the way he has this one thick vein that rolls back and
forth over his wrist bone. My oldest
brother has hands exactly like my mother’s, my father’s hands look exactly like
his fathers, and my son’s feet are very similar to my youngest brother’s
feet. I would recognize the way the hair
lies across my husband’s arms, and would recognize him even if he wore a mask.
These details are as vivid as any face I can recall.
For several years I worked in prisons. My co-workers often wore
uniforms, and were stationed at the same posts day after day. On a daily basis, I recognized them, said
hello, knew their names—but if I saw them outside work, I did not recognize
them. If their uniform was off, or they
were not where they should be (at their post), then I did not recognize
them. I processed the whole
situation—the person, in uniform, sitting behind that desk. I was not
processing the person’s face. Place this
same person in the supermarket, at the post office, or in the school cafeteria
eating with their children, and I do not recognize them at all.
Many people have had the experience of seeing someone, and not
being able to “place” their face; they the person who stands before them from somewhere,
but can’t remember where. Or, they know the face and cannot recall a name. I
too, have had these types of experiences with those that I have had contact
with often enough to recognize something about them. But—more often than not, I
simple do not recognize them at all.
There is no inkling of familiarity, no spark of recognition; it is as if
I am staring into the face of a complete and total stranger.
