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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable experiences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I had never met. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Facial Recognition Abilities

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I asked my friends, one said she often sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma 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 err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many evaluations to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls 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 excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent 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 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 precisely recognize them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was proposed that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who resembles 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 Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding