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Throughout my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences all through my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I didn't know. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Lately, I became curious if others have these peculiar experiences. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she frequently sees people in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have designed many tests to measure the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain processes; for example, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

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

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely mistook a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in long durations of research.

"The occurrence rate 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 known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a few times a month.

{Understanding