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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I had never met. At times I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual looked like – such as my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Lately, I started wondering if others have these odd encounters. When I asked my companions, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many tests to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for example, there is indication 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 recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

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

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

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

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recognize 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 lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. 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 peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

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 perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding