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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar experiences during my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my grandmother. In other instances, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these unusual situations. When I asked my friends, one said she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many tests to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received 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 black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

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

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding