When I Glance at a Stranger and Spot a Known Individual: Am I a Super-Recognizer?

During my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly identify who the stranger resembled – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my friends, one said she regularly sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have designed many assessments to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the initial group. 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 face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity 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 "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, 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 facial recall assessment.

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

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding