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During my twenties, I noticed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd experienced similar occurrences during my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I had never met. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the unfamiliar person looked like – for instance my grandma. On other occasions, a visage simply had a indistinct knowingness I couldn't place.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these peculiar encounters. When I questioned my acquaintances, one said she often sees individuals in unexpected places who look recognizable. Others at times mistake a unfamiliar individual or public figure for someone they know in everyday existence. But some mentioned nothing of the kind – they could easily identify 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? Studies has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just have inaccuracies sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Grasping the Continuum of Face Identification Skills

Researchers have created many tests to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who remember faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often have difficulty to identify family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some assessments also assess how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I have limitations. But scientists "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've studied the skill to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for example, there is proof that exceptional facial identifiers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt curious whether these assessments would offer understanding on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that researchers say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the point that even some new faces look familiar.

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 grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out famous people from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my everyday experience.

I felt doubtful about my results. But after evaluation of my performance, I had correctly identified 96% of the public figure faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's memory for faces. The participant looks at a sequence of 60 monochrome photos, each of a separate face. Then they examine a series of 120 comparable photos – the initial collection plus 60 unknown visages – 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 extreme of the continuum, people with facial agnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my performance, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and prosopagnosics all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Investigating Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some superior face rememberer abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as friendliness or impoliteness. Research suggests that the latter helps people to acquire and commit faces to enduring recollection. While individuating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In furthermore, it was believed I might be "an active face perceiver", meaning I pay a considerable notice 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 prone to notice the stranger who looks like my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Examining Hyperfamiliarity for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I stood on the continuum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Researching further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of reported cases all occurred after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been observing my whole adult life.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the facial recall assessment.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with suspected HFF in many years of research.

"The prevalence is quite low," one expert said of HFF. However, they speculated that there may be a range, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding