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During my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these odd encounters. When I inquired my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have developed many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged 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 range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk 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 difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods 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 many years of research.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding