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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Abilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Investigators have created many tests to assess the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, 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 known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after analysis of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar 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 separate face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to learn and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, 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 challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in many years of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding