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Throughout my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these peculiar encounters. When I asked my companions, one commented she often sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for case, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my real-life experience.

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

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, 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 recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations 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. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding