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During my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar situations during my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I didn't know. At times I could quickly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know family, intimate companions 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 am deficient. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several person recognition tests. I waded 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 lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Possible Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall 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 "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing 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 person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments 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 extended periods of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding