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In my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous experiences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger resembled – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in random places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many assessments to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing 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 recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, 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 precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember 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 identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity 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 "know" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations 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 known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding