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

I'd experienced similar situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual looked like – such as my elderly relative. On other occasions, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I inquired my companions, one commented she often sees people in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. 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 14 minutes 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.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have designed many assessments to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several face identification 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 multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 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 result, but also astonished. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and retain 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 "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity 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 "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in long durations of study.

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

{Understanding