🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. At times I could promptly determine who the stranger reminded me of – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these odd encounters. When I inquired my friends, one said she often sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain functions; for instance, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, 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 recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers 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 elderly relative's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, 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 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 spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, 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 few of people with possible HFF in long durations of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding