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During my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one mentioned she regularly sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times confuse a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify 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 elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Scientists have created many tests to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, 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 familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. 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".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia 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?

Examining Potential Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments 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 syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all happened after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

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

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in many years of investigation.

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

{Understanding