As a child, Yenny Seo would point out a stranger in the grocery store to her mother, and she would often surprise her. When they watched a movie together, they would often see extras who had appeared in other films.
Her mother never thought this was special, and simply assumed she had a good daughter.
She didn't know that others didn't share her love of the private game she played, where she'd spot a person on a bus or the street and then flick through a long list of faces she'd seen before. She says that it has always been fun for her. As a child. I enjoyed looking at different faces.
At university, she would meet people in a new class and remember what kind of photos they had seen. The Guardian has a photo of Alana Holmberg.
She became self-conscious of her skill as she got older and started using social media. I would start a new class in uni or meet people through social gatherings and I would remember visually what kind of photos I had seen them in. She says she would know if she was that person's sibling because she had already been so familiar with them.
I would keep it low and say: "Oh, nice to meet you."
When she was at uni, she worked at a part-time job at a clothing store and showed her skills. The staff was shown a hard to understand video of a shoplifter, and the next time the person entered the store, they were already recognised by the security guard. I had so many instances like that that I didn't think it was special.
A small percentage of the population are classified as super-recognisers. The Guardian has a photo of Alana Holmberg.
Until the early 2000s, little attention was paid to the differences between humans. According to Dr David White, a lead investigator at the Face Research Lab at the University of New South Wales, people believe that the world is the same as others. I think that scientists had the same intuition.
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Your attention didn't stop. It was taken.
The attention-span focus on screens and phones is a new phenomenon.
When a brain injury leaves someone unable to recognise faces, White became interested in the field. He was interested in the fact that people with this condition could still recognise other objects, even though they couldn't see the face of a loved one.
White began examining people without brain injury and discovered there was a lot of variation in their facial recognition ability. A group of just 1-2% of the population are known as super-recognisers, and they can memorise and recall faces even after a brief glimpse.
The world's best super-recognisers were tested in an online tool and Seo was ranked in the top 50. The Guardian has a photo of Alana Holmberg.
The cause is still not clear, with only 20 scientific papers studying super-recognisers. It is thought that genetics plays a role because identical twins show similar performance, and it has been shown that cortical thickness in the part of the brain that supports face recognition is a predictor of superior ability.
White used eye-tracking technology to study how super-recognisers look at faces and found that they are looking more around the face, which suggests they might be painting a more elaborate picture of the face in their mind's eye.
White and his colleagues at the University of New South Wales designed a publicly available online screening tool to try and find the world's best super-recognisers. White invited her to come to Australia for more testing after she gave it a try in her mid-twenties.
More than 100,000 people have been tested, and Seo is still in the top 50.
The use of face masks in the Covid pandemic has given her a challenge, but she can still recognize people if they are wearing one. The Guardian has a photo of Alana Holmberg.
Over the past decade, security and law enforcement agencies around the world have begun to recruit people with better facial recognition capabilities. In the investigation into the poisoning of a former Russian spy with a nerve agent in Salisbury, a special team from the London metropolitan police examined the footage from the crime scenes. Private agencies are now offering the services of super-recognisers.
She realized that she is wired differently after she was diagnosed. The Guardian has a photo of Alana Holmberg.
She is happy with her job as a technician at a pathology lab and doesn't want to repeat her "one crime-fighting moment" from her uni days. The use of face masks during the Pandemic is providing a fun challenge, as she still enjoys looking at faces. The diagnosis has given her confidence in her abilities, and she can still recognize a person even if they are not wearing one.
It made me realize that I must have been correct the whole time. My brain is wired that way, not that I'm weird.
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