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In my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar situations all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unknown individual resembled – such as my elderly relative. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my acquaintances, one commented she frequently sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many assessments to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, 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 celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined 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.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests 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" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

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

{Understanding