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During my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable situations during my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I didn't know. At times I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these odd encounters. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative 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 interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain processes; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, 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 celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, 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 methods like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding