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In my mid-20s, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I had never met. At times I could promptly identify who the stranger resembled – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if others have these odd experiences. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have created many tests to assess the skill to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess 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 remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

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

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, 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 confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in long durations of research.

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

{Understanding