I Look at a Stranger and See a Friend: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?

During my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences during my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unknown individual looked like – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd situations. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described no such experiences – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many assessments to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at determining 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 recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. 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 – comparable to my everyday experience.

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

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute qualities 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 individuating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed 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 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 Over-familiarity 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. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, 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 instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized 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