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During my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if others have these odd experiences. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she regularly sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have created many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. 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 precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests 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" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding