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During my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a café. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I inquired my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others at times misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly distinguish 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 grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: 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 prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain functions; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

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 incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood 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 unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding