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Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I had never met. At times I could rapidly identify who the stranger looked like – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my friends, one commented she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have designed many tests to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. 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 – similar to my actual experience.

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

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 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 content with my result, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding