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During my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my friends, one said she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have designed many assessments to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

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 grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that told 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 – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after assessment of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution 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 learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat 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 hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

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

{Understanding