🔗 Share this article

In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had similar situations all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly determine who the stranger reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I asked my friends, one said she often sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation 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 interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have designed many tests to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations 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. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing 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 facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding