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Throughout my young adulthood, I observed my grandma through the pane of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the prior year. I looked intently for a short time, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd had analogous experiences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. Occasionally I could promptly determine who the stranger looked like – such as my grandma. Other times, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar situations. When I asked my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Person Recognition Capacities

Researchers have developed many tests to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at determining 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 looked at the skill to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use different brain functions; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after assessment of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers 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 grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was considered 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 know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person 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 Hyperfamiliarity 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 "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity 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 challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of research.

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

{Understanding