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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences during my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Abilities

Lately, I began questioning if others have these odd situations. When I questioned my friends, one said she often sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the skill 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 super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

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 recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize 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 grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests 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" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

"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 known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding