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In my young adulthood, I observed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these unusual encounters. When I asked my friends, one said she often sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others at times misidentify a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many assessments to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

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

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – 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 end of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations 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" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding