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Throughout my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my friends, one said she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many tests to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was thought 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 identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding