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Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandma through the glass of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if others have these odd experiences. When I inquired my friends, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many evaluations to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing 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 remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at black-and-white 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 recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after assessment of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

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

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding