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Throughout my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my companions, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally mistake a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have created many tests to assess the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; 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 extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several facial recognition tests. I waded 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 arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Reasons

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply 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 adult life.

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 liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

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

{Understanding