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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I had never met. At times I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandma. Other times, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my companions, one commented she often sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many tests to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

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

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual 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 Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all occurred after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 handful of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The occurrence rate 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 known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding