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Throughout my twenties, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if other people have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she often sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have created many assessments to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for case, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. 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 – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also astonished. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also trick 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 considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy 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 difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in long durations of investigation.

"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 all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding