I Look at a Unknown Person and See a Friend: Am I a Super-Recognizer?

During my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. At times I could promptly identify who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if other people have these odd situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many assessments to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled 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 lineups. 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 quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", 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 attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 potential HFF in long durations of research.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding