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In my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if others have these unusual situations. When I inquired my companions, one commented she often sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

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

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have created many assessments to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated 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 case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in long durations of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding