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Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandma through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous experiences throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger looked like – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Person Recognition Abilities

Recently, I became curious if others have these peculiar encounters. When I questioned my companions, one commented she frequently sees people in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative 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 beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have created many evaluations to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

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

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that told 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 – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. 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 prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While individuating 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 considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized 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