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During my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd had analogous experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she often sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have developed many assessments to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. 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 precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

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

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing 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 facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in many years of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding