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In my mid-20s, I noticed my grandmother through the glass of a coffee shop. I felt dumbstruck – she had departed the previous year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't be her.

I'd encountered analogous occurrences during my life. Periodically, I "knew" someone I didn't know. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the unfamiliar person looked like – such as my grandma. On other occasions, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

Recently, I began questioning if others have these unusual situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one commented she regularly sees individuals in unexpected places who look familiar. Others sometimes confuse a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported completely different responses – they could readily recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just longing that made me see my grandmother that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was commencing to comprehend that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Continuum of Facial Recognition Skills

Researchers have designed many tests to measure the skill to recall faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are superior face rememberers, who recall faces they have seen only momentarily or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often have difficulty to identify family, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also measure how good someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've studied the ability to recognize a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain processes; for instance, there is proof that super-recognizers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Face Identification Assessments

I felt intrigued whether these evaluations would shed some light on why unfamiliar individuals look known. Was I someone who always remembers a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is typical for superior face rememberers. But maybe I hyper-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look recognizable.

I received several face identification tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from three angles, then find it in lineups. During another test that instructed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't exactly identify them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after assessment of my results, I had correctly identified 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Understanding Incorrect Identification Rates

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a separate face. Then they review a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier threshold 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 pleased with my result, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier abilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but exceptional facial identifiers – and probably borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to distinguish countenances – that is, ascribe qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was considered I might be "a attentive countenance examiner", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they recognize someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am disposed to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These assessments 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. Examining further, I read about a syndrome called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the few of recorded occurrences all took place after a health incident such as a convulsion or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been observing 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 challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be liquefying. 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 possible HFF in extended periods of study.

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

{Understanding