Autism, Asperger's Syndrome and Face Recognition

Autistic Spectrum Disorders with Prosopagnosia, or “Face Blindness”

Apr 19, 2009
Jennifer Copley

Prosopagnosia Often Accompanies Asperger Syndrome - Actress Mabel Normand, 1918, Photographer Unknown

Many of those with autistic spectrum disorders have difficulty recognizing the faces of those they do not know well.

Prosopagnosia, also known as facial agnosia or “face blindness,” is a neurological disorder that makes facial recognition difficult or impossible. According to Lawton and Reichenberg-Ullman (2007), 66% of those with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) and other social developmental disorders also have some difficulty recognizing faces.

Research into Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Facial Recognition

Most research into the facial processing abilities of those with ASDs has focused on the ability to read and accurately interpret facial expressions. Research on facial recognition difficulties among those with ASDs has been sparse, but there have been a few studies conducted. Findings indicate that many of those with ASDs have difficulty recognizing the faces of people they have only met once or interacted with a few times but have no trouble recognizing those they know well.

Barton et al. (2005) found that some subjects with ASDs performed well on tests of facial recognition, whereas others showed significant deficits in this area. However, all ASD subjects performed better on facial recognition tests than those whose prosopagnosia resulted from other causes such as genetic predisposition, illness, or stroke. Overall, the performance of those with ASDs who experienced difficulties with facial recognition fell somewhere in between neurotypical control subjects and typical prosopagnosiacs.

Face Blindness as a Social Impediment

Failure to recognize people one has met before can act as a serious social impediment. A prosopagnosiac may meet someone, have an interesting conversation, and then not recognize that person when she encounters him again, which can lead to social embarrassment and anxiety, and make it more difficult to establish friendships. Prosopagnosia is especially problematic in the workplace when the individual is unable to recognize coworkers and bosses.

In addition to failing to recognize acquaintances, the face-blind person may also experience false positives, believing that a stranger is a known person because certain memorized features such as hairstyle or glasses are the same. This can lead to embarrassing situations whereby the prosopagnosiac greets a stranger as though she were an acquaintance.

Theories Regarding Prosopagnosia in Those with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

It has been speculated that the lack of typical social skills associated with ASDs may result from face blindness. However, because some of those with ASDs have normal facial recognition abilities, it is unlikely that social dysfunction prevents the development of such abilities. No significant differences in social skills have been found between face-blind ASD individuals and those with good facial recognition, which indicates that there is no correlation between social competency and the ability to recognize faces.

Another theory holds that the inability to recognize faces may stem from a relatively low social interest in others and the avoidance of eye contact, which may necessitate looking away from faces and thus not developing a clear memory of their characteristics. If such behaviours begin in childhood, perceptual expertise for remembering facial elements may not evolve. This theory suggests that social skills deficits cause face blindness rather than the other way around.

Yet another hypothesis regarding face blindness in those with ASDs has to do with detail orientation. ASDs create a tendency to fixate on certain elements of the face and so the individual may fail to see the face as a whole. Oddly, some studies have found that those with ASDs may be better able to recognize faces when they are upside down.