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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a short time, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if other people have these odd situations. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she often sees people in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain functions; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

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 grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed 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 – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident 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 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in many years of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized 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