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During my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the stranger looked like – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these peculiar situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she regularly sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes 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

Scientists have created many evaluations to assess the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered 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 carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments 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. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding