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During my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar situations during my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I didn't know. At times I could quickly determine who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Lately, I began questioning if others have these odd experiences. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she often sees individuals in random places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

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

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, 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 family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain processes; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused 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 told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity 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 "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"The occurrence rate 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 known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding