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During my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the prior year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced comparable situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. At times I could promptly identify who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have developed many assessments to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, 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 unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with suspected HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding