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In my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd had comparable situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I inquired my friends, one commented she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have created many assessments to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities 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 less than confident about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn 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 analogous presence.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching 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 apply to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding