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During my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had similar situations all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unknown individual looked like – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my companions, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research 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 experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have created many tests to measure the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at telling 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 studied the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers 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.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received 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 black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that directed 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 everyday experience.

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

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a string of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned 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 unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding