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During my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have designed many assessments to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures 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 results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also astonished. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity 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" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity 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 difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

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

{Understanding