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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations during my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I started wondering if others have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one commented she often sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many tests to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to 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.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity 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 "recognize" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. 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 small number of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding