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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the stranger looked like – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if other people have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have created many tests to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain functions; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded 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 multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, 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 confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, 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 carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person 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.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding