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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd had analogous experiences during my life. From time to time, I "identified" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual resembled – like my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if others have these unusual situations. When I questioned my friends, one commented she often sees people in random places who look known. Others at times confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 Spectrum of Person Recognition Skills

Scientists have designed many tests to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome 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 known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in long durations of research.

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

{Understanding