🔗 Share this article

In my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar situations during my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I didn't know. At times I could quickly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she often sees persons in random places who look known. Others at times mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have designed many evaluations to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers 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 amiability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations 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" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

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 hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding