🔗 Share this article

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

I'd experienced similar situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I didn't know. At times I could quickly identify who the stranger resembled – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one said she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many evaluations to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize family, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the capacity to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Reasons

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of study.

"The frequency 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 familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding