Gazing at a Stranger and Perceive a Friend: Am I a Face Recognition Expert?
Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.
I'd had comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.
Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities
In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd encounters. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.
I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.
Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Skills
Investigators have created many tests to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.
Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.
Taking Person Recognition Evaluations
I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.
I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. 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 uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".
Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages
I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.
I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I recognized many of the familiar visages, 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%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics 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 Potential Causes
It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.
In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.
Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces
These tests helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing 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 person recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.
Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in extended periods of research.
"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.
