"When I was in my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I was dumbstruck she had passed away the year before. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her. I'd had similar experiences all my life. Every now and then, I recognized someone I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of like my grandma."
"Researchers have created many tests to measure the ability to remember faces. There is a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, or prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, close friends and even themselves. Some tests also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short."
Occasional false familiarity with strangers can produce vivid moments, such as mistaking a stranger for a deceased relative. Some people frequently encounter unfamiliar faces that feel familiar, while others rarely experience such confusions. Visual attention to faces is extensive, and tests exist to measure face-memory and discrimination abilities. Performance spans a spectrum from super-recognizers, who recall faces seen briefly or long ago, to prosopagnosics, who struggle to recognize even close relations. Some assessments measure the ability to determine whether a face is unfamiliar, a skill that has received less research attention and may rely on different neural processes.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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