🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had similar experiences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. At times I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – like my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I questioned my companions, one said she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many evaluations to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these assessments would shed some light on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received 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 different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, 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 grandma's?

Examining Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations 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" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

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

{Understanding