🔗 Share this article

Throughout my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I asked my friends, one commented she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify family, 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 suspect I have limitations. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

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 recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, 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 familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

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

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recognize 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 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 unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned 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 disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 many years of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding