Find Out If You Have Superior Facial-Recognition Skills

If you’re great at finding familiar faces in a crowd, or forever remember people you’ve met only once, you might be a super-recognizer. While most of us forget the faces of strangers pretty quickly, some people seem to hang on to those memories for quite a long time—and researchers are trying to figure out exactly why that is.

According to Scientific American, scientists are studying super-recognizers in order to better understand how facial recognition and memory work. So far, they’ve found no connection between superior facial recognition skills and high-IQ or object memory, which means facial recognition may operate differently from other kinds of memory. 

Researchers at Bournemouth University have found that super-recognizers have a tendency to focus on different parts of the face than people with normal recognition skills and those who have prosopagnosia (face blindness). They’ve also found that super-recognizers come in different forms: While some are great at memorizing faces, others are good at picking them out of crowds.

Still, researchers are unsure what brain mechanisms are driving different kinds of facial recognition. In order to learn more about super-recognizers, the Centre For Face Processing Disorders at Bournemouth University has launched an online facial recognition test. Those with high enough scores may be asked to participate in future studies. Think you might be a super-recognizer? Curious about what kinds of skills they’re looking for? Find out here.