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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had analogous occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I didn't know. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I became curious if different individuals have these odd situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one mentioned she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others at times misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research 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 interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have created many tests to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my actual experience.

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

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", 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 carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat 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 over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, 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 facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

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

{Understanding