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During my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the pane of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had departed the year before. I stared for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd had comparable occurrences during my life. From time to time, I "recognized" someone I was unacquainted with. Sometimes I could promptly identify who the stranger reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if other people have these odd encounters. When I questioned my acquaintances, one mentioned she regularly sees people in random places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my elderly relative 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 make mistakes sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have created many evaluations to quantify the ability to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to know kin, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the capacity to remember a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use different brain functions; for instance, there is proof that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these tests would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disappointed – a feeling that experts say is common for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt uncertain about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the public figure faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Comprehending Incorrect Identification Frequencies

I also did exceptionally in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for assessing someone's recall for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the original collection. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to differentiate visages – that is, attribute characteristics to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the later element helps people to learn and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look attentively at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who resembles my grandma. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition 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 "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a convulsion or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

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

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in long durations of investigation.

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

{Understanding