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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable situations during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others at times mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? 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.

Grasping the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many assessments to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain processes; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

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

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, 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 stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element 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 comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed 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 disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding