I Look at a Unknown Person and Spot a Acquaintance: Could I Be a Super-Recognizer?

In my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my friends, one commented she regularly sees individuals in random places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – 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 elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have developed many assessments to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain functions; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers 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.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that told 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 everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. 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".

Grasping False Alarm Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat 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 condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, 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 memory for faces evaluation.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding