When I Glance at a Unfamiliar Face and Spot a Known Individual: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?

Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly identify who the stranger reminded me of – like my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Lately, I became curious if other people have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one mentioned she often sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have created many evaluations to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations 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 let down – a feeling that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

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

Grasping False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition 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 "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in extended periods of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding