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In my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Recently, I became curious if other people have these odd experiences. When I questioned my friends, one commented she often sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others at times confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? 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.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many assessments to measure the ability 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 distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight 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 sentiment that scientists say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, 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 real-life experience.

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

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and commit faces to long-term memory. 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 furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, 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 melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding