Can you recall the appearance of any unfamiliar person who walked past you today?
It’s unlikely you can do this, but super-recognizers might be able to. These uncommon people have the capability to identify unfamiliar faces even with just a fleeting glance. By examining these individuals, scientists aim to uncover how we determine when a face belongs to someone familiar—a crucial skill for our inherently social species.
“The human face serves as the primary visual stimulus in our surroundings, likely across evolutionary history,” stated
David White
, an associate professor of psychology and the lead researcher at the Face Research Lab at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. “As social beings, we rely heavily on facial cues for making sensible decisions within our interactions with others.”
For instance, we typically do not require identifying particular chairs specifically, as understanding “it’s merely a chair” suffices, he mentioned.
Meike Ramon
, an assistant professor and director of the Applied Face Cognition Laboratory at the University of Lausanne. “However, when it comes to faces, it is crucial to know which specific person each distinct visage corresponds to.”
Facial recognition across a continuum
Recognizing faces falls within a broader continuum.
On one side are the
2 to 3 percent
of people with
face blindness
—or developmental prosopagnosia—who struggle with identifying faces that they ought to recognize, such as those of their loved ones or even
their own
.
On the opposite side of the spectrum are super-recognizers, initially highlighted in
2009
, who are skilled at recognizing or pairing faces, regardless of whether these faces are unknown to them—whether the images are inverted, have low clarity, or appear from various angles.
Ramon mentioned that they possess “a distinctive capability to create a three-dimensional model of a face, even from just a single two-dimensional image.” Super-recognizers are uncommon; however, their exact rarity remains unknown.
hard to estimate
since there isn’t a universally accepted approach for classifying them.
Many individuals’ capability when it comes to face recognition falls in the middle range, making it simple to identify known faces yet quite difficult to figure out unknown ones.
What makes super-recognizers super
Individuals with exceptional face-recognition skills are attracted to faces.
Despite being shown arbitrary images from daily existence, super-recognizers tend to devote more attention to faces, as Ramon and her team noted in their report.
2022 study
.
Their gaze is instantly attracted to the facial area, irrespective of its position within the image — particularly closest to the ideal region for recognition, which is just beneath the eyes.
“It appears that faces hold significant importance for super-recognizers, though the exact reasons remain unclear,” Ramon stated.
Their brains react distinctively to visual stimuli in under a second after viewing them.
In a
2024 study
Ramon and her team captured brain activity data from 16 super-recognizers and 17 control subjects via EEG when viewing various images like those of plants, animals, landscapes, and faces. Just 65 milliseconds after these visuals appear—quicker than a blink—they exhibit distinct neural responses compared to typical brains.
Notably, super-recognizers showed this variation in neural activity irrespective of the subject matter, indicating that their brains generally handle visual data distinctively.
Other
research
indicates that super-recognizers exhibit wider activation in the brain’s facial processing networks, even when viewing faces they haven’t seen before.
The exceptional skill of super-recognizers in facial recognition might just indicate their proficiency in handling all types of visual data. Conversely, individuals with prosopagnosia could find both facial and general visual perception challenging.
various forms of visual content
.
Interestingly, though, the capabilities of super-recognizers might not be limited to just the visual realm.
2021 study
Of the 529 participants, it was noted that super-recognizers performed significantly better when identifying both unfamiliar and familiar faces.
voices
, even with just average pitch discernment, which could suggest a “shared foundation for person recognition skills” across various sensory modalities, White mentioned.
Nevertheless, super-recognizers possess certain vulnerabilities. Similar to ordinary face recognizers, they too struggle with differentiating the features of individuals from the same ethnic group.
ethnicities
different from their own.
Improving skills in identifying faces
Recognizing unknown faces proves challenging, even for seasoned experts like forensic analysts and border control officers. Sadly, it’s unfeasible to train individuals to turn into super-recognizers, an aptitude that seems to be innate.
When White and his associates compared super-recognizers with trained forensic experts, the distinctions in their approach to facial recognition became evident, even though both groups attained similar levels of precision.
Super-recognizers demonstrated greater intuition and achieved high precision in their assessments much faster, often within merely 2 seconds. Although they spent more time examining faces, there wasn’t a distinct observable pattern in their gaze focus.
2023 study
reported.
In contrast, forensic examiners were far more meticulous and orderly. They spent a considerable amount of time reaching conclusions, sometimes taking as long as 30 seconds, yet they noticed subtle facial cues that typically go unnoticed by most individuals.
What super-recognizers are doing operates like a black box,” White explained. “It involves more automated processing.
The increasing acknowledgment of individuals with exceptional face-recognition abilities has
increased interest
when utilizing their abilities to assist with law enforcement and security tasks, although there doesn’t seem to be an official, structured method for recognizing and assigning these individuals. Ramon has collaborated in this area.
Berlin Police
and White has collaborated with the
NSW Police Force
to identify super-recognizers.
However, super-recognizers aren’t infallible, according to White.
In White’s
research
When both super recognizers and professionals made mistakes, super recognizers remained highly confident, whereas professionals exhibited lower confidence levels.
Up until now, the guidance for enhancing our face-processing skills has been provided by skilled professionals.
In a
2021 study
Mr. White and his team instructed beginner participants on some techniques employed by seasoned evaluators, including concentrating on features like ear shapes, scars, freckles, and skin imperfections. Following only six minutes of training, these newcomers showed modest enhancement—about a 6% increase—in their precision levels.
However, further studies on super-recognizers might aid in unraveling the enigma of how an unknown face transforms into one we can easily recognize and remember. Super-recognizers’ exceptional performance with unfamiliar faces could provide insights into the neurological processes behind this transformation, as stated by White.
Are you curious about human behavior or neuroscience? Send your questions via email.
BrainMatters@washpost.com
And we might address it in a subsequent article.
