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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my elderly relative. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma 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 starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many evaluations to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed 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 everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed 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 prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding