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Throughout my young adulthood, I observed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these odd experiences. When I asked my acquaintances, one commented she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have created many tests to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – 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 familiar.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 disposed to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding