🔗 Share this article

In my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar situations during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could rapidly determine who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if others have these unusual encounters. When I asked my friends, one said she often sees individuals in random places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many assessments to measure the skill to recognize 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 considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign 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 individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

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

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

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

{Understanding