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In my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I stared for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she frequently sees people in random places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have developed many tests to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these tests would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping False Alarm Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of research.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding