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Throughout my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Person Recognition Abilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I asked my friends, one said she frequently sees people in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have developed many tests to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity 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" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of study.

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

{Understanding