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In my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a moment, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd had analogous experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandma. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd encounters. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Researchers have created many evaluations to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain functions; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers 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 waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was suggested that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was considered 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

"The frequency 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 known, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding