Gazing at a Stranger and See a Acquaintance: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?
During my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I stared for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.
I'd experienced analogous occurrences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I didn't know. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.
Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities
Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these odd encounters. When I inquired my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.
I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation 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 interpret the same thing.
Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Capacities
Researchers have developed many evaluations to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.
Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.
Completing Facial Recognition Tests
I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.
I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused 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 told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.
I felt uncertain about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".
Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies
I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.
I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?
Investigating Potential Explanations
It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.
In moreover, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.
Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces
These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.
Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.
Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of study.
"The prevalence 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 known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.