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During my twenties, I observed my grandmother through the pane of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I looked intently for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous situations all through my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Experiences

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I asked my friends, one commented she regularly sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my elderly relative 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have created many assessments to quantify the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unknown people look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that experts say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the old faces, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and probably almost superior rememberers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and store faces to permanent recall. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus 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 unknown person who similar to my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged 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" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all happened after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including visual distortions, 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 long durations of investigation.

"The frequency is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they theorized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding