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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly determine who the stranger reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I became curious if others have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one mentioned she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

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

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have created many evaluations to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed 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 – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, 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 recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one companion 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 positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of study.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding