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In my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had died the prior year. I stared for a moment, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the stranger resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Person Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I inquired my friends, one said she regularly sees people in random places who look known. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish 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 grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 experience the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have created many assessments to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

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 arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – 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 continuum, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments 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. Researching further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. 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 potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The occurrence rate 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 encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding