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In my twenties, I observed my grandma through the glass of a café. I felt stunned – she had passed away the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then reminded myself it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these peculiar encounters. When I asked my acquaintances, one said she regularly sees people in random places who look known. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could readily 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 elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Scientists have designed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But researchers "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures 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 results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and specify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also surprised. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", 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 attentively 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 acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy 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 perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding