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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the stranger looked like – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Face Identification Abilities

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these unusual situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one commented she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally misidentify a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. 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 spectrum of perceptions. Was it just yearning 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have developed many tests to assess the capacity to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt intrigued whether these assessments 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 disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled 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 groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

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

Exploring Possible Causes

It was theorized that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", 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 attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandmother. 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 assessments helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding