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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if others have these peculiar situations. When I asked my companions, one said she often sees people in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many assessments to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (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 physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, 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 methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding