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In my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the stranger resembled – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many assessments to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer 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 relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

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 attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged 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" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing 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 sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in long durations of study.

"The prevalence 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 familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding