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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unknown individual looked like – like my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if others have these peculiar situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

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 black-and-white 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 known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding