When I Glance at a Stranger and Perceive a Known Individual: Could I Be a Face Recognition Expert?

Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the stranger looked like – like my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if others have these odd experiences. When I inquired my friends, one said she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother 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 starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, 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 know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is evidence 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.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded 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 different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Possible Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend 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 evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in extended periods 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 known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding