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During my young adulthood, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could quickly determine who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if others have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she often sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes 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.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have created many tests to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that experts 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 facial recognition tests. I waded through 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 multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, 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 stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought 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 unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible 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