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During my twenties, I observed my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar experiences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could rapidly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these unusual situations. When I inquired my companions, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily identify 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? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good 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 studied the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling stumped 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 instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – 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 end of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Reasons

It was suggested 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 possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding