by Paolo Miguel Anico | Crypton
Superheroes, as we are familiar with in one form or another, have been used in stories for as long as people remember. From the tales and legends of heroes in our history to the contemporary Pop Culture, there is no shortage of superheroes, or “Supers,” as the film “The Incredibles” calls their specific group of enhanced humans. Supers, as we all know, are fictitious. But contrary to this belief, Supers may actually exist within our communities already.
In various corners of the world, there are a number of people, known as “Super-recognizers,” or SRs, who are able to remember and identify any face that they see. Even if they saw someone’s face when they were a child, or saw someone’s face once a decade ago at a concert, they would still be able to recognize these people when they see them again. In this case, some SRs tend to ignore these familiar faces, because they would be accused of stalking. Such an amazing talent is especially useful in jobs like law enforcement, since they would need to single out a possible suspect out of thousands of faces that they see every day.
The technological counterpart of super-recognition would be facial recognition, a tool used in many fields to determine the identity of a person using their face. In the same field of law enforcement, facial recognition is a highly popular tool used in investigations. Some governments would prefer to use one over the other—but research suggests that using both in tandem is much more effective. Facial recognition may have its own lapses, even to a point where SRs are more efficient than them, as suggested by Cimmons (2021) in her article in The Washington Post. Based on an example mentioned in the article, facial recognition identified only one in hundreds of rioters, which an SR already recognized. Meanwhile, the SR recognized among the hundreds of other faces involved in a riot. With the use of both, it would have a significant impact in law enforcement, since both use different methodologies in their jobs.
With the emergence of SRs, researchers would have a hard time validating those who are truly SRs from those who only claim to be, since there is little standardized framework established in the academe. In the effort of mitigating this problem, Ramon (2021) proposed a framework to determine SRs in society. In his efforts, one claim that is misinformed is the saying that “1-2% of the population are super-recognizers” since no diagnostic measures or accepted criteria exist yet, such claims cannot be concluded. A test included in the framework he proposed, also used in the study of Wilmer et. al, (2009), is the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CMFT). Another popular test used in SR determination, or the diagnosis of developmental prosopagnosia (difficulty recognizing faces - opposite of super-recognition) is the Before They Were Famous (BTWF) test, used in the study of Russell et. al, (2009). This test uses photos of famous celebrities before they became famous such as their childhood photos.
In the study of Russell et. al, (2009), one conclusion is that super-recognition falls at the higher end of the range of face recognition and face perception ability, with the lower tail of the distribution representing those diagnosed with developmental prosopagnosia. Thus, the ability (or disability, in some cases) may be caused by genes influencing the brain’s face-specific mechanisms (in the context of facial recognition), as suggested in the study of Wilmer et. al, (2009). The latters’ research is a twin study, wherein two types of twins (monozygotic, or twins from a single zygote, and dizygotic, or twins from two separate zygotes) were utilized. In terms of face-recognition ability, monozygotic twins had a significantly higher correlation score than dizygotic twins, which suggested the high genetic contribution of genes influencing face-specific mechanisms in the brain. Another basis for this conclusion are the studies by Duchaine, et al. (2006), and Woolley, et al. (2008) that showed the heritability of prosopagnosia, “which demonstrated that specific face recognition deficits can run in families.” (Wilmer et al., 2010).
With the emergence of SRs, a standardized framework for the determination of their extraordinary ability is needed so that more studies about them could continue.
Think you are a Super-Recognizer? Find out by trying out the test at https://www.superrecognisers.com/.
References:
Cimmons, M. (2021). They never forget a face. Research delves into how ‘super-recognizers’ can do this. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/super-recognizer-facial-memory/2021/10/29/4cf80caa-2159-11ec-b3d6-8cdebe60d3e2_story.html
Ramon, M. (2021). Super-Recognizers – a novel diagnostic framework, 70 cases, and guidelines for future work. Neuropsychologia, 158, 107809. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107809
Russell, R., Duchaine, B., & Nakayama, K. (2009). Super-recognizers: people with extraordinary face recognition ability. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 16(2), 252–257. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.2.252
Wilmer, J. B., Germine, L., Chabris, C. F., Chatterjee, G., Williams, M., Loken, E., … Duchaine, B. (2010). Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(11), 5238–5241. doi:10.1073/pnas.0913053107
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