Gazing at a Stranger and Spot a Known Individual: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?
In my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.
I'd had similar experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the stranger resembled – like my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.
Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences
In recent times, I began questioning if other people have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my friends, one commented she often sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.
I felt intrigued by this range of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies 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 experience the same thing.
Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Skills
Scientists have created many tests to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.
Some tests also assess how proficient 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 studied the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.
Taking Face Identification Evaluations
I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.
I received several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my actual experience.
I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".
Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages
I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.
I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?
Examining Potential Reasons
It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.
In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.
Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces
These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.
Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.
Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.
"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.
