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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these odd experiences. When I inquired my companions, one said she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others at times mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have created many tests to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial 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 different viewpoints, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

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

Grasping Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate 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 extreme of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers 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 Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments 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" strangers. Researching further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in long durations of research.

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

{Understanding