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In my mid-20s, I spotted my grandmother through the glass of a coffee house. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I gazed for a short time, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered comparable situations during my life. Periodically, I "recognized" someone I didn't know. Sometimes I could quickly determine who the stranger reminded me of – such as my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Person Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I became curious if others have these peculiar situations. When I inquired my companions, one commented she frequently sees persons in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some described no such experiences – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of responses. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Research has found we spend about a quarter-hour 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.

Grasping the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Investigators have developed many evaluations to quantify the ability to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who remember faces they have seen only momentarily or a distant past; at the other are people with face blindness, who often struggle to know family, close friends and even themselves.

Some assessments also measure how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I fall short. But scientists "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've examined the capacity to recall a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is indication that super-recognizers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at recognizing new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Completing Facial Recognition Evaluations

I felt intrigued whether these tests would shed some light on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a sentiment that experts say is frequent for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several facial recognition tests. I completed them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at monochrome photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in lineups. During another test that directed me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt doubtful about my outcome. But after assessment of my scores, I had accurately recognized 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "borderline super-recognizer".

Grasping Mistaken Recognition Percentages

I also performed well in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recall for faces. The participant looks at a series of 60 grayscale photos, each of a different face. Then they review a string of 120 similar photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and specify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer benchmark is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the spectrum, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my result, but also taken aback. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Normal recognizers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was suggested that I probably possessed some super-recognizer abilities. Everyone has a inventory of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and possibly near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and high-resolution catalogue. We're also probably to individuate faces – that is, assign qualities to each face, such as amiability or rudeness. Studies suggests that the latter helps people to learn and store faces to long-term memory. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also deceive me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unknown person who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Excessive Recognition for Faces

These assessments helped me understand where I positioned on the spectrum. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "identify" strangers. Examining further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of recorded occurrences all happened after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing my whole mature years.

Through research sites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition challenges, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

"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 all visages is known, and others, like me, who only encounter it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding