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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the stranger looked like – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these odd situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one mentioned she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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.

Grasping the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Scientists have designed many evaluations to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. 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 quite place them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

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

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the latter 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 grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 disposed to notice the stranger who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity 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 "identify" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing 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 person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, 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 handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The prevalence 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 known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding