🔗 Share this article

Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations all through my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I didn't know. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unknown individual resembled – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if others have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have designed many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Causes

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, 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 identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone 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.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding