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In my young adulthood, I observed my grandma through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandmother. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look known. Others at times misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

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 collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead 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 considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification 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 grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding