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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced comparable situations all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I had never met. At times I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd experiences. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation 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 experience the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have designed many evaluations to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Explanations

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new 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 prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding