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During my young adulthood, I observed my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I looked intently for a moment, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" an individual I didn't know. At times I could rapidly identify who the stranger looked like – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Recently, I became curious if others have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my companions, one said she frequently sees people in unexpected places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many evaluations to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. 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 precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after analysis of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer 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 pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", 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 closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. 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 unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in extended periods of research.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding