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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these odd encounters. When I questioned my companions, one said she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning 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 starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have developed many assessments to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious 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 remember me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that experts say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests 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" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding