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In my twenties, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" someone I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these unusual encounters. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother 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 perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Person Recognition Skills

Scientists have designed many assessments to measure the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "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 abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that experts say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received 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 grayscale 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 known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – 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 continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy 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 person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

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

{Understanding