🔗 Share this article

In my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a moment, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I had never met. At times I could rapidly determine who the stranger resembled – like my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I became curious if others have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have created many assessments to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result 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 misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing 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 face identification difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods 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 investigation.

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

{Understanding