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During my twenties, I noticed my grandmother through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had departed the previous year. I gazed for a brief period, then recalled it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced comparable occurrences all through my life. From time to time, I "knew" someone I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these odd experiences. When I inquired my acquaintances, one said she regularly sees persons in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in everyday existence. But some reported completely different responses – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just desire that made me see my grandmother 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 err 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

Investigators have created many evaluations to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a extensive variety: at one end are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to recognize kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also capture how proficient someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the ability to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain functions; for case, there is proof that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would shed some light on why strangers look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disheartened – a feeling that experts say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in groups. 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 precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my real-life experience.

I felt doubtful about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "almost superior face rememberer".

Grasping False Alarm Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other end of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I recalled many of the familiar visages, but seldom misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Normal recognizers, super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unfamiliar individual's face for my elderly relative's?

Exploring Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and store faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In addition, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These evaluations 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. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a physical event such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, 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 Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"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 few times a month.

{Understanding