Self-recognition in everyday life

A sample of everyday difficulties was collected, encompassing errors and unusual experiences participants had encountered when recognising their own faces in everyday life, with the aim of characterising similarities and differences between the reported difficulties and the major forms of self-recognition impairments described in the neuropsychological and neuropsychiatric literatures (prosopagnosia, mirrored-self misidentification, and Capgras delusion).

A total of 70 participants recalled experiences from memory. Incidents (n = 51) were recorded on questionnaire sheets that were filled out at home. Reports of three categories of incidents were analysed: misidentifications (the participant misidentified her/his own face as being that of another familiar person; n = 5), recognition failures (the participant judged that his/her own face was that of an unfamiliar person; n = 20) and perception of unusual aspects (the participant confidently recognised his/her own face but found that the seen face did not fit well the representation she/he had of his/her own face; n = 26).

In the reported incidents, experiences showing some similarities to those of patients with prosopagnosia, Capgras delusion or mirrored-self misidentification were noted. However, across the whole study, no incident involved a failure of reality testing; in contrast to pathological forms of error, in all of the reported incidents from our study the participant realised that a mistake had been made. The importance of decision processes in pathological forms of own-face misrecognition is discussed.