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In my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if others have these odd situations. When I asked my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

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

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

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

I received several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled 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 directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance 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 mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing 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 challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding