I Look at a Stranger and See a Known Individual: Might I Qualify as a Face Recognition Expert?
In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.
I'd had analogous experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.
Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities
Recently, I became curious if others have these unusual situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.
I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother 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 err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.
Understanding the Range of Person Recognition Skills
Investigators have designed many assessments to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.
Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.
Completing Face Identification Assessments
I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.
I received several facial recognition 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 groups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my actual experience.
I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".
Understanding False Alarm Rates
I also excelled 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 sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.
I felt pleased with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?
Examining Possible Causes
It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.
In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.
Researching Excessive Recognition 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 "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.
Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.
Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.
"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.
