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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced analogous occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these odd experiences. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many tests to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed 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 multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending False Alarm Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance 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 range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity 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 face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

"The prevalence 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 known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding