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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the year before. I stared for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one said she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Skills

Investigators have created many assessments to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

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

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome 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 quite place them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 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 content with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding