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During my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual resembled – like my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one said she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have designed many tests to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the ability to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer benchmark 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 content with my result, but also taken aback. 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 measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

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 recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk 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 facial recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in extended periods 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 all visages is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding