When I Glance at a Unfamiliar Face and Spot a Friend: Might I Qualify as a Exceptional Facial Identifier?

Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar situations during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one said she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have designed many assessments to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, 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 instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding