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In my young adulthood, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had analogous situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she regularly sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? 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.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have developed many evaluations to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped 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 arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain 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 thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Examining further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

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

{Understanding