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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these unusual encounters. When I asked my friends, one said she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? 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.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed 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 – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. 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. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in many years of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding