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During my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the prior year. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the stranger resembled – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these odd experiences. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many evaluations to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed 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 everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The determination 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 particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, 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 few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of study.

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

{Understanding