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During my mid-20s, I observed my elderly relative through the glass of a coffee house. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had similar situations during my life. From time to time, I "knew" an individual I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could rapidly identify who the unfamiliar person resembled – for instance my elderly relative. In other instances, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't identify.

Investigating the Range of Facial Recognition Capabilities

Lately, I became curious if different individuals have these unusual situations. When I inquired my companions, one said she regularly sees individuals in unpredictable places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a unknown person or famous person for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could readily distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this diversity of perceptions. Was it just desire that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Researchers have designed many evaluations to measure the skill to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only briefly or a considerable time past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to know family, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some tests also assess how proficient someone is at recognizing if they have not seen a face before. This is where I believe I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've examined the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two skills use different brain functions; for example, 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 extremely distinct abilities to recall old faces.

Taking Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these assessments would provide insight on why unknown people look recognizable. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often recognize people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is frequent for superior face rememberers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the degree that even some new faces look familiar.

I received several person recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the facial recall assessment, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from multiple perspectives, then find it in groups. During another test that instructed 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 – similar to my real-life experience.

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

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also performed well in the known/unknown countenances task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's recognition for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they look through a series of 120 similar photos – the initial collection plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and identify which were in the first set. The super-recognizer cutoff is roughly 80%; I recalled 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other extreme of the range, people with face blindness accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt pleased with my score, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but seldom confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My performance on this indicator, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Typical rememberers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Investigating Potential Reasons

It was suggested that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and likely almost superior rememberers like me – have a fairly substantial and precise catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as amiability or discourtesy. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to acquire and retain faces to long-term memory. While individuating may help me recognize people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a comparable demeanor.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they know someone they don't know. But because I tend to look carefully at faces, I am inclined to notice the stranger who resembles my grandmother. Indeed, one companion who said she doesn't make person recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Investigating Hyperfamiliarity 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 "recognize" unknown people. Examining further, I read about a condition called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. On the surface, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the small number of recorded occurrences all happened after a physical event such as a epileptic episode or brain attack, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole mature years.

Through scientific platforms, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be liquefying. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the known/unknown countenances task and the memory for faces evaluation.

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

"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 every face is familiar, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding