🔗 Share this article

In my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – like my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd situations. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she often sees people in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of responses. 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 commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Researchers have created many tests to assess the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to know relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain functions; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics 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 intrigued whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, 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 exactly identify them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. 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 small number of people with possible HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding