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In my young adulthood, I noticed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – like my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she frequently sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many tests to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected 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 range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding