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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the stranger resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have developed many assessments to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in long durations of study.

"The frequency 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 experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding