🔗 Share this article

During my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – like my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I questioned my friends, one said she often sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

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

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped 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 groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 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 pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was proposed that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", 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 attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding