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During my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my elderly relative. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many assessments to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to know kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for case, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing 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 face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding