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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my grandma. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Researchers have designed many assessments to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests 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 experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after analysis of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations 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. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in many years of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding