🔗 Share this article

During my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the year before. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly identify who the stranger reminded me of – like my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if others have these odd experiences. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Investigators have created many evaluations to assess the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for case, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding