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During my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these unusual experiences. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees people in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation 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 Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into 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 separate brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that scientists say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

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 series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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 range, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding