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During my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if others have these odd situations. When I questioned my friends, one said she often sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many assessments to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at determining 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 examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain functions; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my real-life experience.

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

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the old faces, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing 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 problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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 every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding