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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I didn't know. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the stranger looked like – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd encounters. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others at times misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research 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 Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have developed many assessments to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these assessments would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, 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 known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of documented instances all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding