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During my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies 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 Range of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have designed many evaluations to assess the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to identify family, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that told 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 – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia 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 Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The occurrence rate 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 familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding