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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered analogous experiences all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I had never met. Occasionally I could promptly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these unusual encounters. When I inquired my companions, one said she regularly sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many assessments to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use separate brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I obtained several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a string of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but rarely misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, ascribe traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with possible HFF in many years of research.

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

{Understanding