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In my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the stranger looked like – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a face simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my friends, one mentioned she frequently sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times confuse a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have created many tests to assess the skill to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is evidence that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that scientists say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I received several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out public figures 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 doubtful about my results. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also taken aback. I recognized many of the old faces, but seldom confused a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments 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" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

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

{Understanding