🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable situations during my life. Periodically, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some reported no such experiences – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have designed many assessments to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain functions; for case, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding