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During my twenties, I spotted my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she frequently sees people in random places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported no such experiences – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have created many evaluations to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good 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 studied the capacity to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped 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 lineups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

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

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good 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 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Plausible Causes

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know 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 acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of investigation.

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

{Understanding