🔗 Share this article

During my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations during my life. Periodically, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the stranger resembled – such as my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if other people have these odd encounters. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have designed many assessments to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, dear acquaintances 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 scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for case, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed 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 – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful 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 "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The prevalence 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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding