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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could rapidly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – like my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. 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 beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have designed many tests to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals 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?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize 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 friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all happened after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in extended periods of study.

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

{Understanding