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During my young adulthood, I noticed my grandma through the glass of a coffee house. I felt dumbstruck – she had died the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar occurrences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could promptly determine who the stranger resembled – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Abilities

Recently, I became curious if other people have these unusual experiences. When I inquired my friends, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize 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 grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Scientists have created many evaluations to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often have difficulty to know kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the skill to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain processes; for instance, there is indication that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would offer understanding on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that scientists say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. 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 quite place them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well 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 sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess 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 metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign characteristics to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to develop and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was believed I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These evaluations helped me understand where I sat on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Researching further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 few of people with possible HFF in extended periods of investigation.

"The occurrence rate is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated 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