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Throughout my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described no such experiences – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of experiences. Was it just desire 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 err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many tests to assess the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed 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 groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding