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Throughout my young adulthood, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable situations during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the stranger resembled – like my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these odd experiences. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have developed many tests to measure the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after analysis of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought 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 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 grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations 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" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing 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 problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 few of people with potential HFF in many years of research.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding