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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable situations during my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one mentioned she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others at times misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many tests to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time 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 determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment 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 waded through them, feeling stumped 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 lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers 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 grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who similar to my elderly relative. 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 evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

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

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding