🔗 Share this article

During my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the stranger looked like – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she often sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many evaluations to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding