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In my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the prior year. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "identified" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the stranger resembled – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have designed many assessments to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – comparable to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", 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 resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in many years of study.

"The frequency 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 familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding