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During my young adulthood, I observed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I stared for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced similar situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have developed many tests to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. 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 capabilities use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

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

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding