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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I asked my companions, one said she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have designed many assessments to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain functions; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, 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 recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding