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Throughout my young adulthood, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I stared for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences all through my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unknown individual resembled – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if others have these odd experiences. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many tests to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification 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 grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial 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 facial recall assessment.

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

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated 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