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In my twenties, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my grandma. In other instances, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Skills

Researchers have designed many tests to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain functions; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. 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 – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold 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 pleased with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia 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 Plausible Reasons

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice 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 disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding