🔗 Share this article

Throughout my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I asked my companions, one commented she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Researchers have developed many evaluations to assess the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Causes

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice 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 stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding