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In my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences during my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly identify who the stranger resembled – such as my grandmother. Other times, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I inquired my friends, one commented she regularly sees individuals in random places who look known. Others at times mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many assessments to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain processes; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused 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 directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. 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 moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity 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 face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools 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 extended periods of study.

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

{Understanding