Dr. Joe DeGutis

So it is a little bit of this stealth disorder. I mean, people only kind of learn they have it often when they are subjected to a whole bunch of new people they have to meet.

We've studied how people become aware that they have this, and often it's a little rocky. It's a little bit like, you know, in school they're like, I just don't pay attention, or I don't care as much about people, or maybe I'm a little bit on the spectrum. They have all these attributions they can give.

If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval of all this other information about them, like, you know, who they are, how you know them, all these other details about the person. So it has this kind of privileged role in terms of getting all this other information out.

It's something that is also very special about humans.

So when I recognize a chair, I'm like, OK, it has something to sit on, has some legs and boom, it's a chair. You're recognizing things at this functional level, which is like, OK, how do I interact with this thing? You know, usually you can do it part by part. One of the things that we do with FACE is more than any other organization.

like visual object is you process it as a gestalt, as a whole, because we have to kind of recognize them and not just like, okay, that's a face, that's a face. We have to be like, okay, that's my friend. Oh, that's not, that's, oh boy, that's the person at work who I need to avoid.

And so it's like, I think that the individuation demands of faces maybe are why we kind of had this specialized system to process faces.

These are all these kind of internal things that we don't talk about. And we just assume that everybody's kind of like us, right?

Oh, it's a picture of like, you know, Barack Obama when he was like two years old. And super recognizers can like see it. There's this kind of cool extrapolation thing that you can be like, I can see, you know, how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.

I mean, maybe you just, like, convinced yourself that you're super and you're not really super.

I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a super recognizer. Wow. I feel like, I mean, maybe when you started taking the test, I was a little skeptical, but I think you're right on. I think this is really good.

Actually, looking at your results, you were perfect on two of the diagnostic tests. You didn't get a single item wrong. You also did really well in this very impossible task where we had you try to learn 60 faces in a very short period of time, and you had to recognize them. like out of 120 faces.

Yeah. No, you did. I mean, that's the thing. We wanted to kind of push you to see what your limits are. And you do have limits, but you were really, you were really quite good.

These are all these kind of internal things that we don't talk about. And we just assume that everybody's kind of like us, right?

Oh, it's a picture of, like, you know, Barack Obama when he was, like, two years old. And super recognizers can, like, see it. There's this kind of cool extrapolation thing that you can be like, I can see, you know, how that could be a younger version of Barack Obama.

I mean, maybe you just, like, convinced yourself that you're super and you're not really super.

I mean, you're kind of the complete package for a super recognizer. Wow. I feel like, I mean, maybe when you started taking the test, I was a little skeptical, but I think you're right on. I think this is really good.

Actually, looking at your results, you were perfect on two of the diagnostic tests. You didn't get a single item wrong. You also did really well in this very impossible task where we had you try to learn 60 faces in a very short period of time, and you had to recognize them. like out of 120 faces.

Yeah. No, you did. I mean, that's the thing. We wanted to kind of push you to see what your limits are. You do have limits, but you were really, you were really quite good.

So it is a little bit of this stealth disorder. I mean, people only kind of learn they have it often when they are subjected to a whole bunch of new people they have to meet.

We've studied how people become aware that they have this, and often it's a little rocky. It's a little bit like, you know, in school they're like, I just don't pay attention, or I don't care as much about people, or maybe I'm a little bit on the spectrum. They have all these attributions they can give.

If you see somebody's face, it quickly triggers the retrieval of all this other information about them, like, you know, who they are, how you know them, all these other details about the person. So it has this kind of privileged role in terms of getting all this other information out.

It's something that is also very special about humans.

So when I recognize a chair, I'm like, OK, it has something to sit on, has some legs and boom, it's a chair. You're recognizing things at this functional level, which is like, OK, how do I interact with this thing? You know, usually you can do it part by part. One of the things that we do with FACE is more than any other organization.

like visual object is you process it as a gestalt, as a whole, because we have to kind of recognize them and not just like, okay, that's a face, that's a face. We have to be like, okay, that's my friend. Oh, that's not, that's, oh boy, that's the person at work who I need to avoid.

And so it's like, I think that the individuation demands of faces maybe are why we kind of had this specialized system to process faces.