Gazing at a Unfamiliar Face and See a Friend: Am I a Super-Recognizer?

Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. At times I could quickly determine who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Lately, I became curious if other people have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in random places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have designed many assessments to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

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

{Understanding