Autism and Face Blindness

Many people on the Autism Spectrum report that they experience a ‘condition’ called Face Blindness.

What Face Blindness means for the individual, is that they have difficulty recognizing and remembering the faces of familiar people or remembering newly introduced persons. Sometimes the changes in a known person’s appearance, for example a hairstyle, can cause tremendous anxieties for a person experiencing the effects of being face blind. Some children have been known to feel and appear extremely upset by the presence or approach of a person they feel they don’t recognize. To them this ‘stranger’ may be envisaged as a threat to them.

Extreme forms of Face Blindness can cause an individual to not even recognize their own immediate family members, friends or others close to them, or even their own reflection in a mirror.

Typically, a person who doesn’t experience Face Blindness can differentiate one person from the next by the structure and facial features and expressions uniquely individual to us all. Even in a crowd of people, this person could quite easily ‘pick-out’ someone familiar to them.

Face Blindness, though, is not unique to some person’s on the Autism Spectrum. It is believed (by scientific studies – see link below) that about 1 in 50 people potentially maintain a form of face blindness. This ‘condition’ can be acquired through injury or an illness affecting the brain, or just be part of the individual’s natural beingness.

But imagine the impact of Face Blindness on a child, teen or adult on the Spectrum, who may already be experiencing, learning to manage or trying to control anxieties and stressors regarding living with their personal and unique of degree of Autism and how such impacts on their daily lives?

Maybe your autistic son or daughter rebels at the thought of a family get-together; a play in the park with other kids; going to school; going to the doctors; leaving the house; other’s visiting your house; changes in the appearance of yourself, themselves or others?

Just maybe their fears could be associated with Face Blindness.

When ascertaining the reasons for some of our autistic children’s behaviours and moments of extreme anxiety or distress, (especially in crowded places, schools, university, family get-togethers, daily interactions with individuals and/or groups of people etc.) it is worth considering Face Blindness as maybe one of the potential reasons for their upset.

A colleague of mine, who is Face Blind, an Autism Consultant and on the Spectrum herself, recognizes me by my voice (intonation for example), the way I move (e.g. walk), and so on. She draws greatly on her intuition and sensing abilities; knowledge bank of the body language, demeanor (etc.) of past personal meetings/interactions with people to conclude a ‘picture’ of the person she is, for example, greeting again.

A child, teen or adult who experiences Face Blindness can and needs to be assisted with developing strategies to manage this so that their rightful quality of life, including self esteem, feeling safe, respected and understood, is honored.

Strategies such as saying your own name to the person as you approach them, for example, “Good morningLilly, it’sJoe.” This allows the person to intuit, sense and relate to your name and tone of voice as you approach them. Limit or don’t change your appearance during the course of an interaction. If in a group scenario, (school class etc.) maybe maintaining a picture set of each person with their name attached to each photo may help. Prepare the individual for any changes in your appearance and so on.

Teaching and helping an individual living with Face Blindness about focusing on and learning to recognize specific features of a familiar persons’ face can help reduce the anxieties associated with the ‘condition’.

One person on the Spectrum described Face Blindness to me as being like experiencing all people’s faces as ‘blank canvases’ in a painting; non descript and meaningless.

Given that recognizing and differentiating between the individual faces of people can help us determine whether that other person is a friend or foe; known or an unknown; threat or non-threat and so on, experiencing Face Blindness as part of our being can cause great distress, pose potential dangers, create fear and uncertainty regarding interacting with others, can isolate one socially and emotionally, decrease self esteem, impact greatly on other parts of our life (work, school etc.) and generally be debilitating – depending on the degree of the Face Blindness.  Each person’s experience of Face Blindness will be unique to them and the strategies required to assist them will also need to be tailored to suit each individual.

For more info regarding Face Blindness;

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“We are all unique; our species diverse; our hopes, dreams and experiences of life are uniquely individual. We are all on a spectrum of differing abilities and I hope that one day we can all cherish the opportunity to learn from each other; respect each other’s differences; help those who need and want our assistance, so that we all can share in equality, wellbeing and peace in this colourful world.” Louise Page 2009

Louise Page is also a mum, relative, friend and colleague to many persons on the Autism Spectrum, and the author of "An Autism Connection - sharing the journey with other parents" and other books pertaining to the Autism Spectrum and children's fiction.