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During my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had analogous experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these peculiar encounters. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees people in random places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many assessments to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: 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 facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain functions; for case, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled 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 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 precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

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

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

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 closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding