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In my young adulthood, I observed my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unknown individual looked like – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my companions, one said she frequently sees individuals in random places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain processes; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 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 content with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification 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 resembles 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 Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding