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During my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual resembled – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if others have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my companions, one commented she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. 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 err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many assessments to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled 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 groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine 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 cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity 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 "recognize" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding