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During my twenties, I noticed my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd had similar situations all through my life. Occasionally, I "knew" an individual I had never met. At times I could rapidly pinpoint who the unknown individual reminded me of – like my elderly relative. On other occasions, a countenance simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Recently, I began questioning if different individuals have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes confuse a stranger or famous person for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned no such experiences – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies 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.

Comprehending the Range of Face Identification Capacities

Scientists have created many tests to measure the capacity to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to identify family, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the skill to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use distinct brain mechanisms; for case, 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 extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Taking Face Identification Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recall me, and feel disheartened – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several person recognition tests. I worked through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, 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 celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt uncertain about my outcome. But after analysis of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the celebrity faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Percentages

I also excelled in the old/new faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a string of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and indicate which were in the initial group. The superior face rememberer cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the familiar visages, but seldom mistook a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers 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 elderly relative's?

Exploring Potential Explanations

It was suggested that I probably possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as amiability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and commit faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

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

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" strangers. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the few of reported cases all happened after a health incident such as a seizure or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of person recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a continuum, with some people who think each countenance is known, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding