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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd encounters. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees people in random places who look known. Others at times mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed 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 momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

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

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify 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 range, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm 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 looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding