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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable experiences throughout my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. At times I could promptly determine who the stranger looked like – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd situations. When I asked my friends, one commented she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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.

Grasping the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have developed many tests to assess the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching 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" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all happened after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, 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 few of people with potential HFF in extended periods 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