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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I gazed for a moment, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences throughout my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I didn't know. Occasionally I could rapidly identify who the unknown individual resembled – for instance my elderly relative. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Exploring the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I started wondering if different individuals have these peculiar encounters. When I asked my companions, one mentioned she often sees individuals in unpredictable places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in actual life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative 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 experience the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Scientists have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one side are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to know family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But researchers "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to remember a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – similar to my everyday experience.

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

Understanding Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as especially effective for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the first group plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, 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 confusing a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Exploring Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

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 incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of documented instances all took place after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a few of people with potential HFF in many years of investigation.

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

{Understanding