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In my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if others have these peculiar situations. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum 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 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 Spectrum of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have developed many tests to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain processes; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. 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 properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

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 sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding