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In my twenties, I observed my grandma through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous situations all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. At times I could promptly pinpoint who the stranger looked like – like my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd encounters. When I inquired my friends, one said she often sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to assess the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme 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 prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at determining 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 skills use separate brain functions; for case, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. 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".

Comprehending False Alarm Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify 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 prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics 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?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating 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 relate to me. But the few of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with potential HFF in extended periods of research.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding