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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar situations during my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these peculiar situations. When I asked my friends, one commented she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described no such experiences – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have designed many evaluations to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained 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 three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities 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 uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping False Alarm Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 prone to notice the stranger who resembles 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.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 many years of investigation.

"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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding