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In my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had comparable experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my companions, one mentioned she often sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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 Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have designed many assessments to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers 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 facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after evaluation of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

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 series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

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 visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding