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During my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my friends, one said she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have developed many assessments to assess the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I worked through 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 lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 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 satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know 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 grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of research.

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

{Understanding