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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd had analogous experiences during my life. Occasionally, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if others have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many tests to measure the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score 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 unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 prone to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding