I Look at a Unfamiliar Face and Spot a Known Individual: Could I Be a Face Recognition Expert?

Throughout my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these odd situations. When I asked my friends, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have created many tests to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals 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 Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice 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 inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification 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 facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in many years 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 each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding