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In my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences all through my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the stranger resembled – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have designed many assessments to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for case, there is proof that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma 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 mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition 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" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy 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 face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

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

"The prevalence 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