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In my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "identified" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my grandma. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these peculiar encounters. When I questioned my friends, one commented she often sees persons in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these tests would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, 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 quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 unknown person who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in long durations of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding