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In my young adulthood, I observed my grandma through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. In other instances, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if other people have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my companions, one said she frequently sees people in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes 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 experience the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Person Recognition Capacities

Researchers have created many assessments to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are superior face rememberers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how skilled someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use separate brain functions; for instance, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these assessments would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that researchers say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I obtained several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt less than confident about my outcome. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine 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 side of the continuum, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but infrequently misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to learn and commit faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I sat on the range. 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 excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a range, with some people who think every face is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding