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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" a person I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – such as my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if different individuals have these peculiar experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look recognizable. Others occasionally misidentify a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some described completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of perceptions. 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 have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have developed many evaluations to quantify the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often find it challenging to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the skill to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain functions; for case, there is evidence that super-recognizers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these tests would offer understanding 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 disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from three angles, 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 known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 similar photos – the first group plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Potential Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but superior face rememberers – and possibly borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is familiar, and others, like me, who only experience it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding