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During my young adulthood, I spotted my elderly relative through the window of a coffee shop. I felt stunned – she had died the previous year. I stared for a brief period, then recalled it was impossible to be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences throughout my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I had never met. At times I could promptly determine who the unfamiliar person reminded me of – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Experiences

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these unusual situations. When I inquired my acquaintances, one commented she often sees individuals in random places who look familiar. Others occasionally mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could easily identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this range of experiences. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of brain malfunction? Scientific investigation has found we spend about a quarter-hour of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not perceive the same thing.

Comprehending the Continuum of Face Identification Capacities

Investigators have developed many assessments to measure the skill to remember faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one extreme are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a considerable time past; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at telling if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I have limitations. But experts "just haven't dug into this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to brain researchers. It does seem that the two capabilities use distinct brain processes; for case, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and prosopagnosics do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to recognize old faces.

Completing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why strangers look known. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recall people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a emotion that researchers say is typical for exceptional facial identifiers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the point that even some new faces look known.

I received several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling puzzled at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in arrays. During another test that instructed me to pick out public figures from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least known, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

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

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for evaluating someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a series of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they look through a series of 120 analogous photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the spectrum, people with prosopagnosia properly recognize an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my performance, but also surprised. I remembered many of the previously seen countenances, but infrequently mistook a unknown visage for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the incorrect identification frequency, was 18%. Normal recognizers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a incorrect identification frequency of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unknown person's face for my grandma's?

Exploring Possible Explanations

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capabilities. Everyone has a database of the faces we know in our recollection, but superior face rememberers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as approachability or impoliteness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to learn and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recall people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an active face perceiver", 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 unfamiliar individual who resembles my elderly relative. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make face identification mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I sat on the continuum. 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 excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unfamiliar faces appear recognizable. Initially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of reported cases all happened after a medical episode such as a seizure or brain attack, unlike the idiosyncrasy that I've been noticing my whole grown-up existence.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 prosopagnosics, as well as people with all kinds of facial recognition problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using methods like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

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

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

{Understanding