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During my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if other people have these odd experiences. When I inquired my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have created many assessments to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures 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 uncertain about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, 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 previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in long durations of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding