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During my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. At times I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

Recently, I became curious if others have these unusual encounters. When I asked my friends, one commented she often sees individuals in random places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have designed many assessments to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently 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, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools 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 extended periods of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding