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During my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar situations all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if others have these unusual experiences. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others at times misidentify a stranger or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many tests to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for case, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling 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 received several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome 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 familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending False Alarm Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles 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.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in many years of study.

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

{Understanding