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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I looked intently for a moment, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd experienced analogous experiences all through my life. Periodically, I "identified" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if different individuals have these odd encounters. When I questioned my companions, one said she regularly sees people in random places who look recognizable. Others at times confuse a stranger or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative 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 err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many evaluations to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain processes; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several facial recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – comparable to my actual experience.

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

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also surprised. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating 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 "recognize" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with possible HFF in many years of study.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a few times a month.

{Understanding