I was a part of Josh Davis' group from 2016 - 2019, until I decided I might be using my powers for evil. I am not top .05%, but I can easily recognize almost everyone. Occasionally I'll meet someone I've met before and it will take me a little while to figure out how I know them, but I know almost everyone else immediately (especially actors, models, and celebrities).
My husband is loads better at this than I am, and he can indeed recognize younger people from much older photos, with different haircuts and makeup, and that really is something to behold. It's a gift.
My astonishing ability to recognize faces has been confined to people whom I knew in the past. But it is not just the face that I recognize. I can reconstruct the moment in time when we knew one another and can repeat to the individual the knowledge of his or her life that I have carried around in some dusty compartment of my brain ever since.
When I first recognized this party trick and for years thereafter, the blank stares I’d receive upon hailing a conocido from long ago bothered me. In attempt to explain this ability to myself, I’d question whether it was that I was of such insignificance in their lives that they’d have no memory of ever having known me. It was years before I recognized that it wasn’t that they were forgetful. It is that my memory works in a different way from that of most people.
A woman whom I randomly encountered was a classmate in third and fourth-grades-decades ago and in another city. I described the house in which she lived in the two years her family lived in my hometown, the occupation of her father and the classmate who had a crush on her.
A stranger dredging up at an instant and presenting undeniable details of her life to her made her a bit uncomfortable. The incident freaked her out.
The lead on a more empirical measurement is worth having. I need to find out whether my abilities are transferable to visages of people with whom I have no personal connection.
My stepfather once stopped a woman in her 50s on the streets of New York and asked if she was _____. She said that was her maiden name. He told her they had both been in the same fourth grade class in Wallingford, CT. There were other such events.
Amazing story. Thanks for stepping forward. Is there a test you can take to understand what “percentile” you are in? 2%? 0.02%? I wonder how many have this ability and keep their mouths shut. How about compared to “perfect pitch” ? Less Frequent or more frequent?
Ditto 20/20 eyesight. How much better can some people see? Are your eyes different or just the “wiring” in the brain.
Would make a great article in Natural History, Scientific American, etc., with support from some scientist studying this stuff.
I always thought I was so good at recognizing faces but I didn't do to well on the 5-minute test. Funny how our perception of our abilities are often way off.
Wow, fascinating and how great to be able to use this skill to help. Imagine trying to find a lost relative through a photo or a killer. How neat. I bet it could be a burden too. I was a person who could recall a name and a face from 15 years ago. At about 40 this started to lessen. I worried I had a brain tumor! Maybe because this peaks at 30, my experience is normal. Now that I am 51, I think the brain tumor is less of a reality.
I have read about this before. A member of the same Metropolitan Police force in London had the top arrest record on the force, even though his job was as an internal administrator. No matter where he went, he would recognize criminals who were wanted, sometimes interrupting a meal at a restaurant when off duty.
He looked for other super-recognizers to start a department to assist in investigations. He did find a few (very few) and also discovered that race plays a factor. He was not good in recognizing blacks and Asians so he needed to recruit from those groups.
I have no idea if this team still exists.
What I do know is that I recognize faces but have a good deal of difficulty with names. There were times when I would meet a client and remember how many children they had, the type of dog they owned, the city they lived in but NO name.
Does my dyslexia play a factor, who knows (I really need spell checker).
I had heard of face blindness both in my undergrad and in graduate school. I honestly think there are a lot of people running around with a random outlier ability.
I’m dyslexic, dysgraphic, and I have dyscalculia. Most people don’t realize dyslexia only refers to reading ability, I was blessed with difficulties in writing and math too. I don’t think I did anything at grade level until 4th grade when my brain figured out reading. Then there was an explosion because I love reading and in 5th grade I was way above grade level. Anyway, I digress…
A learning disability is the difference between your IQ and your academic performance. So in a strange way you have to take an IQ test to prove you aren’t just stupid. So I have had multiple professional IQ tests from clinical psychologists done in my life. The last one was done after high school. The university I was attending required I again prove that I’m not just stupid in order to get accommodations. Big source of pride for me that I got a 4.0 in grad school with zero accommodations and a professor complimented my skill with statistics. Hard work pays off.
The reason I share this long personal anecdote is that I don’t think most people realize actual IQ tests measure about a dozen different kinds of intelligence. While most people have their IQ scores grouped together a decent portion of people will have some crazy outlier. For me its verbal comprehension and memory. I think its because it was the only tool I had when I was young. I had my mom read books to me to every night until I was about 10 when I could finally do it myself.
If you tell me something its pretty much in my head forever. But you have to say it to me, things I read don’t lock in to the same absurd degree. It frankly weirds people out that i’ll remember off hand comments they made years ago. I’ve had to learn to not to bring it up if someone is repeating something they said to me eight years ago but now the details of their story have changed.
However, its great as a therapist. People react differently when their therapist remembers everything they said from the last time they were in therapy years ago. The response is much more positive.
I am curious how the author would compete with basic AI facial recognition, such as one connected to Google Photos? It fairly accurately matches baby and adult photos of the same person, which would be impossible for regular humans but maybe doable for super-recognizers.
Is there a correlation with being a super recognizer and dyslexia? I am a private tutor who teaches dyslexics of all ages. As a whole, they are much better at taking in the big picture which is due to more right brain dominance. Dyslexia is also neurobiological in origin.
I’m a super recognizer, and have won a few spelling competitions. I think it might be the opposite principle at work - a super recognizer also never forgets how a word looks.
Agreed! I'm a terrible speller. But if I write it down my options, I can see which is correct. I'm also a super-recognizer. It freaks people out. When I was in my late 30s, I saw a man in NYC I knew from a summer in Israel when I was 16. He was religious, and when I approached him to say hi, he was very upset. His wife and six children were sitting a few feet away. Lol.
Agree. I scored a 12 of 14 on the first level of the “rapid test” and may take the others. When I first read the article, it also reminded me of how I do not forget how words “look.” I took the test without my reading glasses and well past my 30th birthday :) Very intriguing and something I’ve wondered about in the past.
Having switched from righty to lefty 70 years ago due to polio, and suffering debilitating dyslexia in an era when no one knew what it was - oh he must be retarted - and now being increasingly face blind - I can fully endorse your hypothesis.
WOW!
I was a part of Josh Davis' group from 2016 - 2019, until I decided I might be using my powers for evil. I am not top .05%, but I can easily recognize almost everyone. Occasionally I'll meet someone I've met before and it will take me a little while to figure out how I know them, but I know almost everyone else immediately (especially actors, models, and celebrities).
My husband is loads better at this than I am, and he can indeed recognize younger people from much older photos, with different haircuts and makeup, and that really is something to behold. It's a gift.
Whoa. What an amazing skill!
Beautiful. Thank you.
This is so cool!
Very cool splinter skill!
My astonishing ability to recognize faces has been confined to people whom I knew in the past. But it is not just the face that I recognize. I can reconstruct the moment in time when we knew one another and can repeat to the individual the knowledge of his or her life that I have carried around in some dusty compartment of my brain ever since.
When I first recognized this party trick and for years thereafter, the blank stares I’d receive upon hailing a conocido from long ago bothered me. In attempt to explain this ability to myself, I’d question whether it was that I was of such insignificance in their lives that they’d have no memory of ever having known me. It was years before I recognized that it wasn’t that they were forgetful. It is that my memory works in a different way from that of most people.
A woman whom I randomly encountered was a classmate in third and fourth-grades-decades ago and in another city. I described the house in which she lived in the two years her family lived in my hometown, the occupation of her father and the classmate who had a crush on her.
A stranger dredging up at an instant and presenting undeniable details of her life to her made her a bit uncomfortable. The incident freaked her out.
The lead on a more empirical measurement is worth having. I need to find out whether my abilities are transferable to visages of people with whom I have no personal connection.
My stepfather once stopped a woman in her 50s on the streets of New York and asked if she was _____. She said that was her maiden name. He told her they had both been in the same fourth grade class in Wallingford, CT. There were other such events.
Amazing story. Thanks for stepping forward. Is there a test you can take to understand what “percentile” you are in? 2%? 0.02%? I wonder how many have this ability and keep their mouths shut. How about compared to “perfect pitch” ? Less Frequent or more frequent?
Ditto 20/20 eyesight. How much better can some people see? Are your eyes different or just the “wiring” in the brain.
Would make a great article in Natural History, Scientific American, etc., with support from some scientist studying this stuff.
I always thought I was so good at recognizing faces but I didn't do to well on the 5-minute test. Funny how our perception of our abilities are often way off.
Wow, fascinating and how great to be able to use this skill to help. Imagine trying to find a lost relative through a photo or a killer. How neat. I bet it could be a burden too. I was a person who could recall a name and a face from 15 years ago. At about 40 this started to lessen. I worried I had a brain tumor! Maybe because this peaks at 30, my experience is normal. Now that I am 51, I think the brain tumor is less of a reality.
I have read about this before. A member of the same Metropolitan Police force in London had the top arrest record on the force, even though his job was as an internal administrator. No matter where he went, he would recognize criminals who were wanted, sometimes interrupting a meal at a restaurant when off duty.
He looked for other super-recognizers to start a department to assist in investigations. He did find a few (very few) and also discovered that race plays a factor. He was not good in recognizing blacks and Asians so he needed to recruit from those groups.
I have no idea if this team still exists.
What I do know is that I recognize faces but have a good deal of difficulty with names. There were times when I would meet a client and remember how many children they had, the type of dog they owned, the city they lived in but NO name.
Does my dyslexia play a factor, who knows (I really need spell checker).
Hi Leonard, my expertise is dyslexia as I've been a private tutor for a decade who exclusively serves this population.
What you described is a RAN deficit (rapid automatic naming) which is why you can't retrieve the client's name.
I had heard of face blindness both in my undergrad and in graduate school. I honestly think there are a lot of people running around with a random outlier ability.
I’m dyslexic, dysgraphic, and I have dyscalculia. Most people don’t realize dyslexia only refers to reading ability, I was blessed with difficulties in writing and math too. I don’t think I did anything at grade level until 4th grade when my brain figured out reading. Then there was an explosion because I love reading and in 5th grade I was way above grade level. Anyway, I digress…
A learning disability is the difference between your IQ and your academic performance. So in a strange way you have to take an IQ test to prove you aren’t just stupid. So I have had multiple professional IQ tests from clinical psychologists done in my life. The last one was done after high school. The university I was attending required I again prove that I’m not just stupid in order to get accommodations. Big source of pride for me that I got a 4.0 in grad school with zero accommodations and a professor complimented my skill with statistics. Hard work pays off.
The reason I share this long personal anecdote is that I don’t think most people realize actual IQ tests measure about a dozen different kinds of intelligence. While most people have their IQ scores grouped together a decent portion of people will have some crazy outlier. For me its verbal comprehension and memory. I think its because it was the only tool I had when I was young. I had my mom read books to me to every night until I was about 10 when I could finally do it myself.
If you tell me something its pretty much in my head forever. But you have to say it to me, things I read don’t lock in to the same absurd degree. It frankly weirds people out that i’ll remember off hand comments they made years ago. I’ve had to learn to not to bring it up if someone is repeating something they said to me eight years ago but now the details of their story have changed.
However, its great as a therapist. People react differently when their therapist remembers everything they said from the last time they were in therapy years ago. The response is much more positive.
This is an amazing skill and it would also freak me out to have it!
I am curious how the author would compete with basic AI facial recognition, such as one connected to Google Photos? It fairly accurately matches baby and adult photos of the same person, which would be impossible for regular humans but maybe doable for super-recognizers.
Fascinating!
Is there a correlation with being a super recognizer and dyslexia? I am a private tutor who teaches dyslexics of all ages. As a whole, they are much better at taking in the big picture which is due to more right brain dominance. Dyslexia is also neurobiological in origin.
I’m a super recognizer, and have won a few spelling competitions. I think it might be the opposite principle at work - a super recognizer also never forgets how a word looks.
Agreed! I'm a terrible speller. But if I write it down my options, I can see which is correct. I'm also a super-recognizer. It freaks people out. When I was in my late 30s, I saw a man in NYC I knew from a summer in Israel when I was 16. He was religious, and when I approached him to say hi, he was very upset. His wife and six children were sitting a few feet away. Lol.
Agree. I scored a 12 of 14 on the first level of the “rapid test” and may take the others. When I first read the article, it also reminded me of how I do not forget how words “look.” I took the test without my reading glasses and well past my 30th birthday :) Very intriguing and something I’ve wondered about in the past.
Excellent point. So do you see a picture of a word? I most certainly do not, but am an excellent speller.
Having switched from righty to lefty 70 years ago due to polio, and suffering debilitating dyslexia in an era when no one knew what it was - oh he must be retarted - and now being increasingly face blind - I can fully endorse your hypothesis.