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Throughout my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations during my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could rapidly pinpoint who the stranger resembled – like my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these odd situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one commented she often sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many evaluations to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain functions; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

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 sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding