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In my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar situations during my life. Occasionally, I "identified" an individual I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandma. Other times, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I inquired my friends, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others sometimes misidentify a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some described no such experiences – they could easily recognize 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 grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have created many evaluations to quantify the skill to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

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

I received several face identification 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 arrays. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive 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 considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who resembles my grandma. 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 evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole adult life.

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

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with suspected HFF in extended periods of research.

"The frequency 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 experience it a few times a month.

{Understanding