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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 passed away the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I asked my friends, one commented she regularly sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have designed many assessments to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at determining 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 looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. 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".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition 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 "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding