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Throughout my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual looked like – like my grandmother. Other times, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look known. Others at times misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some reported completely different responses – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. 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 commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Scientists have designed many assessments to assess the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for example, there is evidence 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.

Undergoing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities 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 outcome. But after assessment of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, 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 unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing 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 facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected 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