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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if others have these odd situations. When I asked my friends, one said she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many tests to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 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 performance, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative 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 disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding