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During my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I looked intently for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "knew" a person I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandma. Other times, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if other people have these odd situations. When I asked my acquaintances, one commented she regularly sees people in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure 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 diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative that day – or some kind of mental glitch? 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 experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many assessments to measure the ability to recall faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also capture how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a emotion that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I was sent 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 multiple perspectives, then find it in lineups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as especially effective for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with facial agnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but rarely mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I likely possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of documented instances all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in extended periods of investigation.

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

{Understanding