🔗 Share this article

During my twenties, I noticed my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one said she regularly sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times confuse a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures 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 results. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandma. 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 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 "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, 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 suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding