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Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandma through the window of a café. I felt stunned – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or public figure 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 diversity of perceptions. Was it just desire 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the skill to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed 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 – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, 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 small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency 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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding