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Throughout my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the stranger resembled – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she frequently sees persons in random places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize 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 grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 Range of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have developed many tests to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked 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 different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify 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 end of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, 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 mistaking a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a condition 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 health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. 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 small number of people with possible 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 continuum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding