When I Glance at a Unfamiliar Face and See a Friend: Am I a Face Recognition Expert?

In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have created many assessments to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I received several person recognition 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 lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

"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 each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding