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During my young adulthood, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered similar situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "identified" an individual I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – for instance my grandma. In other instances, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

In recent times, I began questioning if others have these odd encounters. When I asked my acquaintances, one mentioned she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look known. Others sometimes misidentify a unknown person or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could easily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Person Recognition Capacities

Investigators have developed many tests to measure the ability to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence 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 remember old faces.

Undergoing Face Identification Assessments

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why strangers look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that scientists say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

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

Comprehending False Alarm Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but super-recognizers – and likely near-exceptional individuals like me – have a fairly substantial and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear recognizable. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding