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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I didn't know. At times I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my grandma. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my companions, one commented she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after analysis of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score 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 confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching 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 "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity 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 facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding