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During my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I inquired my friends, one said she regularly sees persons in random places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have created many assessments to assess the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain functions; for instance, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling confused 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 lineups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals 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?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think every face is recognizable, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding