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In my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my friends, one commented she often sees individuals in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily identify 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 brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have designed many tests to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations 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" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

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

{Understanding