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In my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if others have these odd encounters. When I inquired my friends, one said she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range 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 approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have developed many assessments to assess the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one companion 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 assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding