🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my friends, one said she regularly sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many evaluations to assess the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use different brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. 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 trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments 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" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, 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 potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding