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Throughout my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I had never met. Sometimes I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual resembled – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if others have these peculiar encounters. When I questioned my friends, one said she regularly sees people in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative 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 starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capacities

Researchers have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

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

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a physical event such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing 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 challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in extended periods of study.

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

{Understanding