Propagnosia and Autism

There is some research suggesting a possible link between prosopagnosia  and autism. However studies are correlational in nature and do not establish a causal link between prosopagnosia and autism

What is Propagnosia

Propagnosia (face blindness), is a neurological condition that affects a person's ability to recognize and remember faces. There is difficulty recognizing familiar faces, such as those of family members, friends, or colleagues. They may also have difficulty recognizing faces in photographs or on television.

Propagnosia is a specific type of visual agnosia, which is a broader condition that affects a person's ability to recognize and interpret visual information. While some people with propagnosia may have difficulty recognizing other objects or visual stimuli, their primary difficulty is with recognizing faces.

Propagnosia can be congenital (present from birth) or acquired later in life, often as a result of a brain injury or illness. People with propagnosia can learn to compensate for their difficulties through other means, such as using contextual cues or relying on other sensory information. 

Autism and Propagnosia

There is some research suggesting a possible link between prosopagnosia  and autism. Some examples

• A 2007 study found that adult autistics (compared to NT controls)are  more likely to have difficulty recognizing faces, and suggests that this may be due to underlying differences in brain structure and function that are common to both ASD and prosopagnosia (1)
• A 2015 study found autistic children (compared to NT controls) more likely to to have difficulty recognizing faces, particularly when the faces were presented in a degraded or ambiguous way. The study suggests that this may reflect a general difficulty with visual processing in autistic children (2)

It's worth noting that these studies are correlational in nature and do not establish a causal link between prosopagnosia and autism. Further research is needed to better understand the relationship between these two conditions.

References

(1) Boucher, J., Lewis, V., & Collis, G. M. (2007). Voice processing abilities in children with autism, children with specific language impairments, and young typically developing children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(12), 1254-1262. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01838.

(2) Nakano, T., Tanaka, K., Endo, Y., & Yamane, Y. (2015). Atypical gaze patterns in children and adults with autism spectrum disorders dissociated from developmental changes in gaze behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282(1807), 20150793. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2015.0793