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During my young adulthood, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these odd encounters. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she often sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify 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 grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities 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 outcome. But after assessment of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to develop and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat 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 over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 prevalence 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