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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar experiences during my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I didn't know. At times I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Recently, I became curious if other people have these odd situations. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she often sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have created many evaluations to measure the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. 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 – comparable to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers 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 grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", 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 attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, 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 instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in long durations of research.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding