Gazing at a Unknown Person and See a Known Individual: Might I Qualify as a Super-Recognizer?
Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.
I'd had comparable situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I didn't know. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandma. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.
Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Abilities
Lately, I began questioning if other people have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my friends, one commented she often sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.
I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.
Grasping the Range of Face Identification Skills
Researchers have developed many evaluations to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.
Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain processes; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.
Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations
I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.
I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, 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 exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.
I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".
Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates
I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.
I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?
Exploring Possible Reasons
It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.
In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely 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 person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.
Investigating Over-familiarity 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 "know" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing 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 melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.
Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in long durations of research.
"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 every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.
