Are you a super recogniser or are you face blind? Here's how you can find out.



I've long suspected my daughter has the superpower of facial recognition; it started when she was very young. I remember her seeing an actor on TV when she was about 5, telling me that she'd seen him on stage in Beauty and the Beast in Sydney some months earlier, and then proving her point by finding the actor's photo in the program which was filed away on her bookshelf. Perhaps she has a future at New Scotland Yard...

On Saturday morning I thought of this superpower when I heard Geraldine Doogue on ABC radio, talking to writer Pater Raden Keefe about his article in The New Yorker, "The Detectives Who Never Forget a Face". At New Scotland Yard, there is a team of police 'super-recognisers', officers who have an unnatural talent for recognising faces, even at low resolution and years after they have first seen a mug shot of them.

 

We all know that London is full of CCTV cameras- perhaps as many as a million- but Keefe makes the point: what if we capture a crime on video but nobody can identify the perpetrator?

 

That's where the team comes in. They review CCTV footage in an effort to identify the criminals. One young detective, James Rabbett has made nearly six hundred 'idents' in six months! He even chased down and arrested a jewel thief who he recognised on a day off, a year after he had seen an image of him.

So, are you a super-recogniser? You can find out by taking the Cambridge Face Memory Test. I couldn't resist it, and I scored 86%. I'd love to know how you go on the test. And I'll try to persuade Sarah to have a go at it- maybe she's a super recogniser! Or perhaps she just has a memory for faces, like her mum.