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In my young adulthood, I spotted my grandma through the pane of a coffee shop. I felt astonished – she had passed away the prior year. I stared for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered comparable occurrences during my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" an individual I had never met. Occasionally I could quickly determine who the stranger resembled – such as my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't identify.

Exploring the Variety of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I started wondering if other people have these unusual experiences. When I asked my friends, one said she regularly sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others sometimes mistake a stranger or public figure for someone they know in actual life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly distinguish people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt curious by this range of perceptions. Was it just yearning that made me see my elderly relative 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 beginning to realize that we can all see the same face but not interpret the same thing.

Grasping the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Skills

Investigators have designed many tests to measure the ability to remember faces. There exists a wide range: at one extreme are super-recognizers, who recognize faces they have seen only momentarily or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often struggle to identify relatives, intimate companions and even themselves.

Some evaluations also measure how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I think I fall short. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated 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 separate brain processes; for example, there is evidence that superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia do about as well as each other at discerning new faces, despite their vastly dissimilar abilities to recall old faces.

Undergoing Person Recognition Evaluations

I felt curious whether these evaluations would offer understanding on why unknown people look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often remember people more than they recognize me, and feel let down – a emotion that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify faces – to the extent that even some new faces look known.

I was sent several facial recognition tests. I waded through them, feeling stumped at times. In one, called the memory for faces evaluation, I had to look at grayscale photos of a face from three angles, then find it in groups. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least recognizable, but I couldn't precisely recognize them – similar to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my performance. But after evaluation of my scores, I had properly distinguished 96% of the famous person faces. The conclusion was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Grasping Incorrect Identification Percentages

I also excelled in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for measuring someone's memory for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a different face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 unfamiliar countenances – and specify which were in the original collection. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I remembered 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with face blindness correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my result, but also astonished. I recognized many of the previously seen countenances, but seldom misidentified a unfamiliar countenance for one that I'd seen before. My result on this measure, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, super-recognizers and face-blind individuals all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I mistaking a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandma's?

Examining Plausible Reasons

It was proposed that I probably possessed some exceptional facial identifier capabilities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but superior face rememberers – and probably near-exceptional individuals like me – have a comparatively extensive and detailed catalogue. We're also likely to individuate faces – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Research suggests that the second aspect helps people to develop and commit faces to permanent recall. While individuating may help me remember people, it may also mislead me into seeing my elderly relative in a woman who has a similar air.

In addition, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a lot of attention to faces. Others may have more false alarm 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 similar to my grandma. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes acknowledged she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I stood on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "know" unknown people. Researching further, I read about a disorder called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unknown faces appear known. Initially, this sounded like it could relate to me. But the handful of documented instances all occurred after a physical event such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the peculiarity that I've been experiencing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 face-blind individuals, as well as people with all kinds of face identification problems, including visual distortions, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments like the old/new faces task and the memory for faces evaluation.

Experts have heard from only a handful of people with potential HFF in many years of study.

"The occurrence rate 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 recognizable, and others, like me, who only encounter it a several occasions a month.

{Understanding