Autism and Facial Recognition
One of the things that is common among people with autism is lack of facial recognition. This does not mean that they do not know who is who, rather they cannot recognize facial cues. There is a great scene in the Temple Grandin movie where she has to learn facial expressions from drawings matched to emotions. Basically they can’t tell mad from sad, happy from confused.
Although there is improvement over time in many skills of the person with autism, apparently this is not one of them. One study has demonstrated that facial recognition often becomes worse over time. The bottom line is do not expect the person with autism to understand your facial expressions. If you have something to say, say what you mean.
