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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a café. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. At times I could quickly identify who the unknown individual looked like – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Range of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if others have these odd situations. When I questioned my companions, one said she regularly sees people in unpredictable places who look known. Others occasionally mistake a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Scientists have designed many tests to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at determining 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 examined the capacity to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain processes; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several person 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 multiple perspectives, 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 – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate 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 side of the range, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who similar to my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend 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 assessments helped me understand where I stood 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 disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

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 tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding