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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if other people have these odd experiences. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have created many assessments to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: 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 have difficulty to know kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers 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.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

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

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after assessment of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice 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 stranger who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned 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 syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding