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During my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize 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 grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have created many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify family, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. 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 quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 inclined to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding