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During my mid-20s, I observed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar situations during my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. At times I could quickly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. 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 err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the skill to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, 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 public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

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

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I likely possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual 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 positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, 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 previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of research.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding