I Look at a Stranger and See a Acquaintance: Might I Qualify as a Face Recognition Expert?

During my twenties, I spotted my grandma through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I stared for a brief period, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly determine who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandma. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if other people have these peculiar encounters. When I asked my acquaintances, one mentioned she frequently sees people in random places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have designed many assessments to assess the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping False Alarm Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance 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 prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", 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 attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of research.

"The frequency 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 several occasions a month.

{Understanding