When I Glance at a Unknown Person and See a Known Individual: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?

During my twenties, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the year before. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous occurrences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I didn't know. At times I could promptly identify who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I asked my companions, one said she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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.

Grasping the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many tests to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the old faces, but rarely confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. 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 moreover, 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely 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 facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in many years 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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding