🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these odd encounters. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Scientists have created many evaluations to assess the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, 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 mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding