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In my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences during my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual resembled – like my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she often sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have created many tests to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient 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 skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for case, there is proof 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 recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, 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 – similar to my actual experience.

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

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number 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 continuum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding