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During my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a café. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she frequently sees individuals in random places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many assessments to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that told 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 – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk 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 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 potential HFF in extended periods of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding