Autistics and Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, a better term than "face-blindness" as it does not borrow from another disability , affects 2-3% of the general population to some lesser or greater degree.

It *might* be that it only affects some autistics and some of those with head traumas.

Alexithymia refers to not "reading" facial emotions, body language, emotional intomations - a separate matter. Alexithymia and Prosopagnosia however do tend to accompany each other. Alexithymia can affect one's own ability to express emotion or pass information about "how we are" or "where it hurts".

The whole NVL or Non-Verbal Language matter, up to 92% of language some claim, can be an issue for very many if not all autistics for a variety of reasons surrounding how we face, hear, process.

Prosopagnosia can range from not quickly identifying people you know as you pass them (earning wrongful accusations of snobbery) to not being able to remember what your mother looks like as you search for here in a crowd, being dependent on other factors - her clothing, smell, last location, height, etc. Shocking.

In autistics, it is likely to be a storage, speed of access for referencing, neuron communication, and eye-contact-avoidance issue. Some argue that it is all a totally different phenotype within the autism family, and point to autistics who can better identify family members if show photos upside-down.

It may also be connected to a certain touching indiscriminate way some young autistics refer to classmates with random gender changes, or as 'they'.

There is an array of strategies to get around, but not through, Prosopagnosia. A small PDF can be formally downloaded here: https://prosopagnosiaresearch.org/face.../coping-strategies

Sometimes an autistic as they grow older will learn to make mental calculations around reading up to 17 points of each face and get rather good at identifying others, but studies show the calculations necessary remain cumbersome and tiring.

A lot of autistics I know are very equal, very dispassionate, unaware that they do not care who a person is, or looks like, and they remain determined to treat everyone the same, irrespective of race, hierarchy, blood relationship, caste, good looks, gender, or mannerisms. They are the sort of people I would love to see running the civil service, allocating resources, using governmental discretionary powers, etc. How about you?