🔗 Share this article

In my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar situations during my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. On other occasions, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd situations. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she regularly sees people in random places who look known. Others at times mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have developed many assessments to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain functions; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing 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 face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding