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In my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if other people have these peculiar situations. When I asked my companions, one said she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have created many assessments to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point 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 Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 quite place them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the old/new 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 series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The occurrence rate 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 familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding