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Throughout my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. At times I could rapidly identify who the stranger reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these odd experiences. When I inquired my acquaintances, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Skills

Scientists have created many assessments to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped 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 arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", 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 closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition 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. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in long durations of research.

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

{Understanding