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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I stared for a moment, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I didn't know. At times I could quickly identify who the stranger looked like – for instance my grandma. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these unusual situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one mentioned she often sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have designed many evaluations to assess the capacity to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for case, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment 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 was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused 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 lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

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

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, 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 elderly relative's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding