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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unknown individual looked like – like my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these odd situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one mentioned she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others at times confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Scientists have designed many assessments to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped 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 directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently 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, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding