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In my young adulthood, I observed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had comparable situations during my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a countenance simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I began questioning if other people have these odd encounters. When I asked my companions, one said she frequently sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this spectrum of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Scientists have developed many tests to assess the ability to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, 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 recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Comprehending False Alarm Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – 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 range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the familiar visages, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and store faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention 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 disposed to notice the unknown person who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I positioned 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 excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding