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In my young adulthood, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had died the year before. I gazed for a moment, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced analogous situations throughout my life. Periodically, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly identify who the stranger resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Examining the Variety of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual experiences. When I questioned my companions, one commented she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look known. Others at times confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned completely different responses – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation 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 interpret the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Investigators have developed many tests to quantify the ability to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to identify relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how good someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Face Identification Evaluations

I felt interested whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is common for superior face rememberers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through 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 told 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 – comparable to my real-life experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 monochrome photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a sequence of 120 comparable photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the first set. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also surprised. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Typical rememberers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was believed I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance 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 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 "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a condition called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods 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 long durations of research.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they hypothesized that there may be a spectrum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only undergo it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding