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During my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the pane of a café. 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 had comparable situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – like my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if different individuals have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my companions, one commented she frequently sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others occasionally confuse a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. 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 beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have designed many tests to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for case, there is proof 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.

Taking Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, 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 unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all happened after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The frequency 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 known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding