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During my young adulthood, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual resembled – like my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these unusual experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she often sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have developed many tests to assess the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is proof that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 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 pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 disposed to notice the stranger who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, 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 face identification difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of investigation.

"The occurrence rate 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