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During my mid-20s, I observed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar situations during my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

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

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify 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 friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, 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 melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency 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