C takes a while to learn names when he meets a ton of new people all at once, like a class on the 1st day of school.
Interestingly enough, when he was in EI preschool this was never an issue. He always knew all the kids, teachers, aids and therapists names. However, in kindergarten he kept getting his team mixed up (granted, he had a teacher, an aide, a speech, an OT, a social worker and a psychologist who he met all at once, plus 17 kids in the class, and he was pulled out of class alot). The difference between preschool and kindergarten? NAMETAGS! In EI preschool everyone wore a nametag. C not only knew everyone's names, but how to spell them. In kindergarten, without the visual cue of a nametag, it took much longer to learn the names and not get them mixed up.
There wasn't an IEP goal, but the team noticed that C was struggling with the names so they made a booklet with their pictures with a name under each picture and went through it with him a few times until he got it. It only took a week or two to nail it once he had the names written out under the pictures.
Funny thing is, I'm the same way. If I see someone's name written on a nametag, I always remember it. But I can meet someone at a party and strike up a conversation and 15 minutes into it I can't remember their name and am embarressed to ask again. If I see the person again I always recognize them, remember where I met them, and every single thing we talked about, but often don't recall the name.
My oldest son had a hard time learning the names of his classmates when he was younger. I think part of the problem was the fact that he makes poor eye contact. He would notice the smallest details of the objects in the room, yet he wouldn't always notice the characteristics of the people in it.
At the beginning of the school year, I requested photos of all the kids and their names. The teacher ended up taking individual photos of the kids wearing name tags, and then put them all on a ring for us. We basicly had flashcards that I could go through with my son. It ended up working out well for us. By 3rd grade, we no longer needed to do this.
Yeah, people with Asperger's often have facial recognition problems. Mine aren't as severe as what you mentioned with your son, but, for as accurate as my memory is, it's shocking how poor I am with recognizing faces. I think avoiding eye contact has something to do with it, because I tend to get nervous when even looking at someone's face when we're talking, so it affects how I perceive things. I remember the nervous feeling, but not the facial features...My son never just "picked up" names in preschool. He knew the teachers' names but not the kids' names. I didn't think too much of it until he had been there a whole year and was still saying "hey you, girl" to a classmate whereas a much younger child who had just started there could identify *me* (saying the equivalent of "hi, Johnny's mom!").
Learning his classmates' names was on his first IEP (when he started elementary school). At home, I made a storybook for him by scanning the class pictures everyone gets. At school, they made a Bingo/Lotto game for him -- drawing a photo card and placing it on his Bingo/Lotto card where that photo and/or name was. It worked pretty quickly, but he had trouble with a couple of the quiet girls. He still gets similar names mixed up sometimes -- like if he had classmates named Bob and Billy Bob, he'd call them both Billy Bob.
We also had a couple incidents where he was taken aback by a change in his teachers' appearance (one wore her hair in a bun once, another wore a new sweater that was dressier than her usual style). He seemed unsure that they were in fact his teachers.
I'll have to check out that faceblind link, but right now my younger son is begging to go to youtube and look at train videos...
One of the goals I asked to be put into my ds's IEP was to learnOur teacher let us take pictures of all the kids and I made a poster with their names labelled under them....this was placed in our hall at her eye level so she had to see them everyday:) I would go over all their names constantly and ask her questions about them..by the end of year she knew their first & last name as well as how old they were..who was good and bad:)
Ask the teacher if this is a possibility~she would have to do it:) ..she told me normally they are not allowed to do this because of privacy issues but knowing we were only using the photos at home to benefit her she allowed it:)