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During my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in random places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? 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 experience the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out famous people 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 uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood 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 condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in many years of investigation.

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

{Understanding