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During my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandma. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd situations. When I asked my companions, one commented she often sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation 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 Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. 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 excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 handful of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding