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In my mid-20s, I observed my grandma through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar situations throughout my life. From time to time, I "recognized" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly determine who the unknown individual reminded me of – such as my grandmother. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't place.

Investigating the Variety of Face Identification Capabilities

Recently, I became curious if other people have these odd encounters. When I asked my companions, one said she regularly sees people in random places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some described completely different responses – they could readily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Investigators have developed many tests to quantify the skill to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I have limitations. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the capacity to remember a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for instance, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look recognizable. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that researchers say is frequent for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding False Alarm Frequencies

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a separate face. Then they look through a sequence of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my result, but also astonished. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My score on this measure, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and detailed catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In furthermore, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more mistaken recognition moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely 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 acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the few of documented instances all occurred after a health incident such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of study.

"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 each countenance is familiar, and others, like me, who only undergo it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding