🔗 Share this article

Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd encounters. When I asked my acquaintances, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have created many tests to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for case, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed 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 three angles, then find it in groups. 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 precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance 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 stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall 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 considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 possible 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 every face is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding