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Throughout my twenties, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger looked like – such as my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Exploring the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if others have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my companions, one mentioned she often sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of perceptions. 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 approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many assessments to assess the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to know relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that directed 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 – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", 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 carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding