Gazing at a Stranger and See a Known Individual: Am I a Super-Recognizer?

Throughout my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced analogous occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – like my elderly relative. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to measure the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at telling 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 studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to 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 Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person 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 memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

"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 several occasions a month.

{Understanding