When I Glance at a Unfamiliar Face and Spot a Known Individual: Could I Be a Super-Recognizer?

In my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual looked like – such as my elderly relative. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

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

Understanding the Range of Facial Recognition Skills

Researchers have developed many evaluations to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain functions; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments 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" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing 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 person recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in many years of study.

"The occurrence rate 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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding