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

I'd encountered analogous situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. At times I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Experiences

Lately, I began questioning if other people have these unusual encounters. When I questioned my acquaintances, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Scientific investigation 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 perceive the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Researchers have developed many assessments to assess the skill to recognize faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side 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 find it challenging to recognize relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, there is evidence that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would shed some light on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, 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 – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after analysis of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Frequencies

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as especially effective for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Potential Causes

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to differentiate visages – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and store faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who resembles 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 Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests 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 hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

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

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

{Understanding