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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences all through my life. Occasionally, I "knew" a person I had never met. At times I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; 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 extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. 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 exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Explanations

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

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 identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

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

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

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding