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During my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many tests to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain processes; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts 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 facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify 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 extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", 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 attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding