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During my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if others have these unusual experiences. When I asked my friends, one said she often sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many evaluations to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, 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 known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

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

{Understanding