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During my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could promptly identify who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these unusual situations. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Scientists have created many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use different brain functions; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers 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 elderly relative's?

Examining Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations 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" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all happened after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding