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During my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the pane 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 encountered analogous occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly pinpoint who the stranger resembled – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these odd situations. When I inquired my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize 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 cognitive error? Studies 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have designed many tests to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome 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 familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia 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?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one friend 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 evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, 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 instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

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

{Understanding