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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage 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 questioned my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many tests to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, 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 misidentifying a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a epileptic episode 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 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in many years of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding