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During my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my grandma. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma 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 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 Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: 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 face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain processes; for case, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

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

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding