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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my grandma through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the stranger resembled – such as my grandmother. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one commented she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? 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 perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have created many evaluations to assess the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused 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 celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after assessment of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify 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 spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing 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 visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in long durations of research.

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

{Understanding