When I Glance at a Stranger and See a Known Individual: Am I a Face Recognition Expert?

Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unknown individual resembled – like my grandma. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these peculiar situations. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others at times confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have developed many assessments to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding