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During my twenties, I spotted my elderly relative through the pane of a café. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I gazed for a short time, then reminded myself it couldn't be her.

I'd experienced analogous occurrences all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Occasionally I could rapidly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – for instance my grandmother. On other occasions, a visage simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't place.

Investigating the Spectrum of Person Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I began questioning if others have these unusual experiences. When I asked my companions, one commented she frequently sees individuals in random places who look known. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported no such experiences – they could effortlessly 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 mental glitch? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Person Recognition Abilities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to assess the capacity to recall faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one end are superior face rememberers, 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 find it challenging to recognize family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two skills use distinct brain functions; for case, there is indication that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Face Identification Tests

I felt curious whether these tests would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they recognize me, and feel disheartened – a emotion that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several face identification tests. I worked 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 told me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – similar to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain about my results. But after assessment of my performance, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The determination was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a collection of 60 grayscale photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a string of 120 comparable photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my score, but also taken aback. I recalled many of the old faces, but rarely misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and face-blind individuals all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I confusing a unknown person's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was theorized that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but super-recognizers – and possibly almost superior rememberers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, assign traits to each face, such as friendliness or discourtesy. Research suggests that the later element helps people to acquire and retain faces to enduring recollection. While distinguishing may help me recognize 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 engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the stranger who looks like my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Researching further, I read about a syndrome called over-familiarity with countenances (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Superficially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including sight abnormalities, like when faces appear to be melting. 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 handful of people with potential HFF in long durations of investigation.

"The occurrence rate 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 multiple instances a month.

{Understanding