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In my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my grandma. In other instances, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I began questioning if other people have these unusual experiences. When I asked my friends, one commented she often sees people in random places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Investigators have developed many tests to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped 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 groups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after analysis of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score 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 confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick 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 false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 few of people with possible HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding