🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I had never met. At times I could quickly determine who the stranger looked like – for instance my grandma. Other times, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if others have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many tests to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: 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, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for case, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Examining further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing 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 facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in long durations 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 each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding