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Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if others have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others at times confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported 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 grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Researchers have developed many assessments to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched 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 different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Possible Explanations

It was theorized 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 possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully 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.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 potential HFF in many years of study.

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

{Understanding