When I Glance at a Stranger and Perceive a Friend: Could I Be a Exceptional Facial Identifier?

Throughout my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the stranger looked like – like my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these odd experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many assessments to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments 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 "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt curious 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 remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. 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 less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face 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 prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted 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 range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

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

{Understanding