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

I'd had similar situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" someone I had never met. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I inquired my friends, one commented she often sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times confuse a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this spectrum of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Researchers have created many evaluations to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often struggle to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told 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 – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after analysis of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and precise catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to develop and commit faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

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

Examining Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole mature years.

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 perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding