prosopagnosia

[Zemanski]

Com has real difficulty recognising people, even fairly important people like teachers and LSAs, and I think this has a major impact on his ability to build and maintain relationships.

Apparently this is called face blindness or prosopagnosia and in the developmental form (it can be caused by brain injury) it is very rare - I was wondering how common it is as a comorbid with AS

 

please answer for youself only if you have AS

Edited December 23, 2005 by Zemanski

[Kerre]

I can remember some people. But sometimes I don't have the slightest memory of them, so my mum says 'Do you remember Joe?' or whatever, and I'm like '...no.'

[TuX]

I have facial blindness,I've not recognised my mum or others when they've had haircuts or changed all of their clothing.

It is a common trait with ASD,popular topic on the AS forums I use.

Edited December 23, 2005 by TuX

[Ian Jordan]

Prosopagnosia is when you don't see the face - essentially the face or parts of the face disappear and are missing.Whilst uncommon I only see it in ASD, for those going to lecture in Sunderland (March 21) I will be showing some videos of patients and the effects of treatment.

For those with prosoagnosia there are numerous other comorbid visual perceptual difficulties as well as semnsory integration issues

 

This is different to cognitive (recognition) or memory problems and causation is different.

 

To differentiate - can you see all the face when you look at the nose - if part of the face is "lost" or you cannot see the face then you have prosoagnosia, if you can see it but cannot recognise who it or what the expression is then you have a cognitive problem.

 

Both can be addressed using specialist visual techniques

[Melow]

I seem to have the reverse of this, I NEVER forget a face, but hardly ever remember the name !

[DAS999]

My G/F struggles to recognise people if they are not in the right clothes or right place (our GP in a supermarket)

[Kathryn]

I voted "serious problems". The psychologist who diagnosed L was quite struck by this and when she tested for this L came out with a score of something like 2 out of 20 which was lower than she had seen. I think it led to many problems when L was at school - fellow pupils would wave to her in the street and she didn't recognise them so she would appear to cut them dead.

 

A couple of days ago we went to see the Narnia film. I went into the cinema with L while her dad bought refreshmaents. He came in to the darkened cinema and stood at the end of the row handing me the stuff. L nudged me and said, "who's that?" She said she hadn't recognised him because "he was doing different things"

 

To some extent her auditory memory helps her compensate. She will often tell me who a particular actor is and what other films they were in, going by the voice alone.

[lindy-lou]

india seems to be the opposite of this and she will remember people from months ago that she only met once or briefly.

[mossgrove]

Hi Melow!

 

Welcome to the forum. You'll find lots of advice and support here.

 

Why not post something about yourself in the Introductions thread?

 

Simon

[Tally]

I have some problems with this, especially if I see someone in a different context to usual, like seeing a colleague out of uniform, or seeing my parents in the shop where I work (they live 200 miles away and were visiting for the weekend, so this is a very rare occurrence, but it took me a minute to work out who they were).

 

I also have problems if a customer asks me for something and I have to go away and look/find out. When I come back I often don't know who I am looking for. I try to make a deliberate attempt to remember something particular about them, for example, short woman wearing pink coat, but if someone else happens along also wearing a pink coat, I get very confused.

 

I am good at recognising the people I know, or see regularly, and I am good at remembering the names of those people, but I cannot for the life of me put the 2 together.

[lil_me]

I didn't used to think it was an issue for my son, then I got my hair cut on tuesday the last day of term and when I went to collect him from school he looked straight past me I never thought about it until I read this post. He also walked off with another woman when we were out shopping about 2 weeks ago as she was wearing the same as me.

Edited December 23, 2005 by lil_me

[Zemanski]

I asked Com to look at my nose and tell me if he could see all of my face - he wasn''t sure, which was a bit confusing given that I was pretty sure it was prosopagnosia

 

So I went back and told him he was only allowed to look at my nose - he says when he looks at my nose he can't see any of the rest of my face; looks like proso as Ian describes it

 

the joys of literal AS interpretation

[phasmid]

Phas jr has been the victim of some pretty nasty assaults (I refuse to use the term 'bullied'). The trouble was that, with a few exceptions, he could not name the children involved because he didn't recognise them. They were at his school, in his year and, we were told some were in his class. He still wasn't able to name them. However, those that he could, or were named by others were guaranteed one thing - a phone call by me to the police naming them!

[Zemanski]

We've had the same

Com does learn the names of kids who torment him frequently - well a couple of them anyhow - and I always think it's such a shame that the few kids he does know are usually the ones who make him feel so bad

 

Z

[smiley]

It really is amazing what i find out in this place

 

Little monkey has always struggled with names (or at least, we thought it was names...).

 

He's been with the same set of children at school for three years - he can name about five of them (and that's only been this past term). If we see another child from his class outside of school - he doesn't recognise them. He was utterly convinced he knew a child we saw at the shops - we don't know the child, but his school jumper was the same colour as M's.........

 

He doesn't recognise family members and will often get them mixed up and call them by the wrong name........ I made up a visual chart, using photos of family members, thought we were doing really well - until i covered up the name underneath, he didn't recognise them then....

 

If i wear my hair up, it confuses the hell out of him... I just assumed it may be the change.....

 

God, now i've thought about it - i could go on and on.......

[Malika]

Hi,

 

H has problems recognising people and as well when somebody annoyes him he is just able to say wether they are in his class or not, but I am struggling as well and if somebody dress in a different way or has a similar apparence than somebody else I just get confuse.

However H when looking at the nose can see the face very well (as he said) and all the surrounding while I cannot see an entire face when looking at the nose.

 

Thanks Ian for your comment very informatives as always.

 

Malika.

[Tez]

A had his wrist broken at school. It was a deliberate act of bullying and the matter was reported to the police. The police arrested the child concerned, who was identified by witnesses to the event, not A, and wanted to prosecute, however, the CPS wouldn't allow the prosecution to go ahead because A said he was unable to identify the boy which made him a weak witness and gave a lack of credibility to the case. The police asked if he was afraid to name him, because under those circumstances they could proceed with the prosecution, but A was adament that he wasn't afraid he just couldn't, so apart from holding the boy in the cells for the night the matter was dropped, although the boy was permanently excluded from school.

 

This was before A's diagnosis of AS and prosopagnosia, infact, it was this incident which finally persuaded our GP that A was having problems that required diagnosis. The police have since told me that with A's current diagnosis they would have proceeded with the prosecution.

Edited December 24, 2005 by Tez

[phasmid]

This is the stance the police now take with Phas jr - he is vulnerable as a victim and witness therefore they will take the position that if there is another witness they will use them and not him. Getting another witness can be a different matter of course, but that said, it has happened.

[Kathryn]

Tez we had a similar situation - L was assaulted in the park by two boys from the school - she knew this only because they were in uniform. They knew her by name. She was unable to give an accurate description of them to the police. Luckily two friends were with her and were able to identify them on the school's database.

[Zemanski]

I've been laid up with a bad back for a while so haven't been up to using the computer

 

thanks for all the information - it ties in well with the research I've been reading and also what I've been finding out about Com's prosopagnosia

 

Com has never seen his own face except in a photo

 

he can see a whole face in a picture but never realised he was supposed to see a whole face when he looks at a person

 

he can see emotion in a picture (not a lot but he is relatively good at identifying emotions from photos) but because he can't see more than one point of the face at a time he can't read real faces

The reason he has over-intense eye contact seems to be that he does try to apply what we've been teaching him for years about reading emotion but to do it at all he has to focus only on the eyes and even that is extremely tiring and limited

 

no wonder social communication is difficult - not only does he not recognise people to the extent that each time he meets someone he has to start the relationship from scratch again but he can't see enough of their face to even begin to tell how they are feeling no matter how much teaching and practice he has in therapy groups

 

I cannot imagine what it must be like for him to enter a classroom or a dining hall!

 

Zemanski

[barefoot wend]

Zemanski

 

Good to see you back.

 

Hope things are better now.

 

Barefoot

[Tez]

Zemanski,

 

As you know A has the same problems. One of the things that I find so frustrating is the lack of recognition of the very real problems that this causes. A's Consultant, who is normally very understanding and on the ball, wrote in her assessment report that although A has no facial recognition ability whatsoever, in practise this caused him few problems since he used other identifying characteristics such as tone of voice. We had a long conversation about this where I pointed out how wrong she was, that A could still not recognise most of the members of his class - even from tone of voice, could not read emotion, had no idea of intent from facial gestures and would even walk past us in the street if we didn't speak to him. It causes immense problems in all areas of life and makes forming and sustaining relationships very difficult, but I don't think anyone who doesn't have the problem has any real conception of the difficulties.

 

Clearly, from your poll, this problem is far more prevalent than most experts would believe, perhaps it is time to raise awareness.

[Ian Jordan]

I routinely address these symptoms and believe that all ASD children should be assessed using the Orthoscopics system (as I believe it to be the only method that can address symptoms adequately)

A high proportion of children with ASD (not all by any means but sufficiently large to consider an epidemic) cannot physically process visual information in facial and space recognition, reading and MUCH more.

 

Hope to see you at Autism in mind in March when I will be showing some very intersting effects of how vision interferes with sensory perception.

[Tez]

Ian,

 

I've had a look at your Orthoscopics site and the section under what children might experience on a page. Would you normally expect children with prosopagnosia, dyspraxia and sensory integration problems to have these sort of visual problems when reading? If they don't appear to, would this seem unusual? Also would skim reading perhaps disguise some of these difficulties?

Edited January 4, 2006 by Tez

[Ian Jordan]

the orthoscopics web site does not cover a lot of what is possible.

The facial expression effects are very different to reading and writing problems and the neurology is different. There are many visual effects that go along with prosopagnosia but they are usually difficult to investigate unless you have professional knowledge. These include intermittent scotoma, mapping effects, physiological diplopia, fusion and fixation problems. Skim reading is often consequential to attential field reduction (but not always) and often requires modification. This can be achieved in seconds and reading speed is often reduced although comprehension and accuracy is improved.

However as reading is learnt at a much later stage than faces the effects are often very different.

 

Ian,

 

I've had a look at your Orthoscopics site and the section under what children might experience on a page. Would you normally expect children with prosopagnosia, dyspraxia and sensory integration problems to have these sort of visual problems when reading? If they don't appear to, would this seem unusual? Also would skim reading perhaps disguise some of these difficulties?

[Zemanski]

I didn't think Com had problems with vision for reading as he has always read well at a very high level. Although I knew he had problems with jump convergence when having to refocus from the blackboard to a book I thought most of his difficulties were with depth perception, but when he was originally tested for irlen syndrome a couple of years ago it made a clear audible difference to his fluency, it was only later that we realised that the lenses made a difference to his depth perception too.

 

But now I know about his face reading problems I am realising that prosopagnosia is a primary barrier to his social communication, not just comorbid with the AS and irlen simply can't do the job for him.

 

We will definitely be seeing you, Ian, with Com first but also with Dot as soon as we can arrange it.

 

One thing I'm fairly proud of recently is that I've managed to get prosopagnosia into the training package for ASCs in at least a section of our LEA. I agree it should be part of the screening at the diagnostic and needs assessment stage.

[smiley]

Does anyone have infomation that i can hand to M's school about prosopagnosia? It's become clear that he does have this and several other sensory problems (to say the least...).

 

It needs to be fairly easy to read and not too long.

 

Thank you <'>

[Zemanski]

Prosopagnosia seems to be almost as individual as AS in the way it presents and in the way people with it respond to their difficulties so it's difficult to find any one thing that's simple enough to illustrate the problem yet informative enough to be educationally helpful - I've just written a page for a therapy group he's starting tomorrow on how it affects Com and how to support him best but it's very individual.

 

This site is nice as it gives pictorial representations of what people might see as well as fairly straight forward information - the bit about stones was part of what I sent to our advisor when she wanted to add it into the training package

 

http://www.prosopagnosia.com/

 

Zemanski

[smiley]

That's excellent - thank you xx

[phasmid]

Nice to see you back Zemanski

[Zemanski]

only in fits and starts, Phas, I still can't sit long but I've been itching to get back to this thread for days - talking to Com about what he sees has been fascinating and having different perspectives on it really gets my mind fizzing

 

 

Z

[Ian Jordan]

maybe I should undertake a presentation to explain what is going on and show some tricks to reduce effects.

 

invite me someone - I will need an hour and a half.

[phasmid]

I know I could arrange a venue local to me but the trouble is forum members are spread over the whole country. I would be fascinated by it, as I'm sure would be many others. Could you PM the forum hosts Ian and see if they are willing and able to organise something?

[Zemanski]

the more venues the better I would have thought?

 

we've been failing to arrange one in Leeds for a while (too much personal stuff getting in the way, sorry) but there's the one in Sunderland in March for some of us northerners so one down in your neck of the woods would seem fair, Phas.

 

Z

[Ian Jordan]

perhaps it would be better if those that come in march to the presentation post their comments (good or bad) and whether they think people with ASD should be given the knowledge - i think that they will be be surprised at how much they will understand and hopefully I will make peoples lives a little better. It is just an overview but I have seen so many threads on this site that would benefit from it........

 

The presentation will have videos, animations, demonstrations and maybe a little theory.

 

And the most important person who has never seen me lecture - my mother! So I will have to be good!

 

At Sunderland I intend to show how so many problems in ASD are caused by visual input, most people will be surprised at how much we address, The Jackson documentary was just a small part of what is possible, to see it in real life in a demo is much more spectacular. Every sensory system will be modified, some in very unexpected ways. I do NOT intend it to be an academic night, this one will be for parents (some older teenagers may find it enjoyable too). Get your teachers along too, they will benefit a lot - and through them your children

 

Hope to see you there,

Ian

[smiley]

Ian - Would you be prepared to travel?? I'm in the Hants/Surrey/Berks area and would love to see your presentation. If i can bug enough people to come along would you consider it??

[Ian Jordan]

no problem, but need reasonable number of people

ian

[DAS999]

I would be more than willing to attend

[Tally]

I would be interested in attending this, and I think my husband would come too. I live in Devon, but I can travel. London/Surrey would be particularly convenient as I could stay for free at my parents' house, but I could get anywhere really.

[rainbow queen]

my son swears folk hes seen in town or in the park say.....are so and so that he may vagelly know and i will point out that no its not them but looks a bit like them-at which i get a full scale argument and get called a liar

 

then theres people who he dose know who say hello and he then blanks them and wont answer!!!!

 

he also keeps asking me what people r called when they r complete strangers and wont except that i do not know them.

 

he calls most men dads and old folk his granny or grandad-and will say it to them like hello dad to a stranger in a shop at which the person dont know what to respond and gives me a funny look