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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the prior year. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I became curious if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my acquaintances, one mentioned she regularly sees people in random places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. 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 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

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

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. 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 small number of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding