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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my grandma through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the prior year. I stared for a moment, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my companions, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes 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.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have created many assessments to assess the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing 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 visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding