🔗 Share this article

During my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my companions, one said she regularly sees people in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many tests to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to know relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through 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 multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. 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 real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, 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 stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments 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" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods 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 occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding