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Throughout my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the window of a café. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a moment, then recalled it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations throughout my life. Occasionally, I "identified" an individual I didn't know. At times I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – like my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Face Identification Abilities

Lately, I became curious if other people have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my friends, one commented she frequently sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this spectrum of experiences. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Research has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just make mistakes sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Range of Facial Recognition Capacities

Scientists have developed many tests to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one side are super-recognizers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to recognize kin, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how skilled someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain functions; for example, there is proof that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their wildly different abilities to remember old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often recognize people more than they recall me, and feel let down – a feeling that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped 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 groups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after analysis of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Understanding False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the old/new faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing 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 string of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 unknown visages – and indicate which were in the first set. The superior face rememberer threshold is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with prosopagnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the previously seen countenances, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a stranger's face for my elderly relative's?

Investigating Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I likely possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also probably to differentiate visages – that is, attribute traits to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and store faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered 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 prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" strangers. Investigating further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

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

{Understanding