Gazing at a Unfamiliar Face and See a Known Individual: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?

Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced analogous occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have designed many assessments to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for case, there is proof that super-recognizers 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 Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through 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 directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 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 content with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers 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 grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding