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In my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if other people have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my companions, one commented she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many tests to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know relatives, close friends 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 think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused 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 directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification 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 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 Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Researching 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 documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, 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 Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding