What it's like to remember nearly every face

Transcript

MANOUSH ZOMORODI, HOST:

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on the show, What's in a Face.

Do you have any idea how long a face will stay in your mind? Like, once it's in there, is it there forever?

YENNY SEO: I actually don't know. But, I mean, as an example, I have come across faces that I remember seeing from when I was younger than 10, so...

ZOMORODI: Oh, wow.

SEO: Yeah. So I have come across, like, schoolteachers or classmates or people I remember in my neighborhood when I lived there as a child. And it's a lot harder to explain where I've seen them.

ZOMORODI: Oh, so you're saying it's more just a sense of familiarity?

SEO: Yeah. And it's almost like this intuition or this kind of ping. And I know - like, I am so confident I've seen that face before. That happens instantly.

ZOMORODI: This is Yenny Seo, and she is what's called a super-recognizer.

SEO: So super-recognizer - firstly, I find that term very cringey.

(LAUGHTER)

ZOMORODI: Oh, no.

SEO: Basically what it is is super recognizers people who are maybe on the top 1-2% who are very good at remembering faces. And I'm told that it's about 80% or so of the faces that we see, we remember. So it's very high in comparison to the average person.

ZOMORODI: Yenny knew she was always good at recognizing faces. But about five years ago, she realized that her ability was really unusual.

SEO: I just turned on the TV, and I happened to come across this show about people with different abilities. And I saw this gentleman was based in the U.K., and he was a police officer. And they made him do a test where he was standing in a really big train station with lots of people going through.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INCREDIBLE MEDICINE")

UNIDENTIFIED TV PERSONALITY: You've got to try and find my four actresses who have hidden themselves away in the crowd or be wandering around.

SEO: And he was shown photos of, I think, a handful of different faces. And he had to pick out the people that he'd seen in the photo. But the trick was they would, you know, put a wig on them, or they would be wearing a different hat or glasses.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INCREDIBLE MEDICINE")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Black leather jacket, bluejeans.

UNIDENTIFIED TV PERSONALITY: Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Things that (inaudible).

SEO: And he was able to, I think, pick them all out. When I saw that, I just got goosebumps, and I just had this really strong confidence that somehow I'd be able to do those tests.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "INCREDIBLE MEDICINE")

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Is it the lady in the black jumper, cream top and bluejeans?

UNIDENTIFIED TV PERSONALITY: Brilliant.

ZOMORODI: Yenny took some tests online, and she did really well. So she got in touch with a researcher in Australia, where she lives, who confirmed that she was indeed a super-recognizer.

SEO: I ended up visiting the lab in Sydney, and they put some sort of sensor - a detector. So they saw where my eye movements - how it worked when I was exposed to a face. And it's not that I pinpoint on one feature. I would not focus on the eyes or nose or mouth or the shape of the face. It's just the whole. The face as a whole leaves kind of an imprint in my head.

ZOMORODI: So have you ever found, like, your ability useful, then - like - other than, like, you know, fun party trick?

SEO: Yeah. I mean, when I was in uni, I worked at a clothing store. And we - I mean, I ended up catching a shoplifter because we had a team meeting, and there was a particular shoplifter who would repeatedly steal, like, the highest-priced item in the store. And they had this CCTV footage of her, and it was just this really grainy black-and-white photo. And they showed it to us during our team meeting in the morning, and they stuck it on the wall. And I looked at it, and I was like, all right. I don't know if I'll be able to catch that person. I didn't really think much about it.

An hour or so into my shift, that exact person walked in, and I just knew straight away it was that person. Even though the photo was really grainy, I just knew.

ZOMORODI: What did you do?

SEO: We had security guards in our store, so I just had to - we were wearing walkie-talkie type of things, and I just told them, yeah, she's here. She's just walked into the store. So maybe you guys should go and have a chat with her.

They ended up catching her. And then they had to call the cops in. And so that was my one crime-fighting experience.

(LAUGHTER)

ZOMORODI: From what I understand, a lot of super-recognizers work in or work with law enforcement - is that - or in some kind of security capacity. Is that not something that you sort of thought, well, you know, I could actually make money off of this?

SEO: Yeah. I mean, at one point I think I did consider it. But I think - like, it's still very new, and the research in this area is still developing. I know, like, countries like the U.K. - like, their police enforcement have started recruiting officers who have that ability. But I always thought it was a little bit creepy that I - (laughter) I don't know if creepy is the right word, but I always thought that, you know, it would be perceived as being a bit like I was a stalker or something.

ZOMORODI: Yenny sees and processes faces in an extraordinary way. But technology is quickly passing her superhuman abilities. Most of us already use facial recognition to unlock our phones and tag people in photos. Governments, law enforcement and companies can use cameras and algorithms to collect and identify us. But where will we draw the line. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.