There does seem to be a higher than expected occurrence of other neurodiversities alongside prosopagnosia, but research in this area if very much in its infancy.
There is a research paper by Nana Svart and Randi Starrfelt (from the University of Copenhagen) “Is it just Face Blindness? Exploring Devlopmental Comorbidity in Individuals with Self-reported Developmental Prosopagnosia” which explores this area. They look at aphantasia, dyscalculia, dyslexia, navigation problems and synaesthesia, but this study does not include autism, which a significant number of our Face Blind UK members report.
John Towler, a psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist from Swansea University, gave a presentation to Face Blind UK members in November 2023, which included a review of this study. You can listen to his talk on Neurodiversity and developmental prosopagnosia (starts at 28 minutes through the video).
Lynne Soraya, a writer and disability advocate with Asperger’s Syndrome, explores her own visually different experience of the world (including face blindness) in an article The Little Things: Seeing Things – How a person with Asperger’s sees the world. She concludes – “At least my life is never boring!”.
Face Blind UK is keen to work with members and specialists to develop this section of the website and to explorer the impact of the co-occurrence of different neurodiversities on people’s everyday life.
