Gazing at a Stranger and Perceive a Known Individual: Am I a Face Recognition Expert?

In my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Lately, I began questioning if others have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my companions, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others at times mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding