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Throughout my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my friends, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have created many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize family, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled 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 examined the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that scientists say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

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 distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, 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 elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was thought 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 identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in long durations of research.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding