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In my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences throughout my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Lately, I began questioning if others have these odd encounters. When I questioned my friends, one said she regularly sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to measure the skill to remember 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 find it challenging to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess 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 extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. 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 unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding