When I Glance at a Stranger and Perceive a Friend: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?

In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable experiences during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly determine who the stranger looked like – like my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Exploring the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she often sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative 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 starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many tests to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing 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 challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding