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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these odd experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Researchers have developed many tests to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for case, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I received 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 three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis 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 Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 prone to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all occurred after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in many years of investigation.

"The occurrence rate 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 familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding