🔗 Share this article

Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual looked like – like my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if others have these unusual situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err 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

Investigators have designed many evaluations to assess the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at determining 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 studied the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled 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 lineups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. 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 hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing 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 face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think every face is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding