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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the stranger resembled – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if others have these unusual situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she regularly sees people in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have developed many assessments to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification 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 different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence 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 identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 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 score, but also surprised. I remembered many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Explanations

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 super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like 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.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests 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" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few 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 observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding