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In my twenties, I observed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt stunned – she had departed the year before. I looked intently for a brief period, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd had analogous situations during my life. Periodically, I "identified" a person I was unacquainted with. At times I could promptly pinpoint who the unknown individual resembled – like my grandmother. Other times, a face simply had a subtle recognition I couldn't recognize.

Examining the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Capabilities

In recent times, I started wondering if others have these peculiar experiences. When I inquired my friends, one mentioned she often sees people in unexpected places who look familiar. Others at times misidentify a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some reported nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly identify people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt fascinated by this diversity of experiences. Was it just yearning that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of cognitive error? Studies has found we spend about 14 minutes of every hour looking at faces – do we just err sometimes? I was starting to understand that we can all see the same face but not experience the same thing.

Understanding the Range of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have developed many evaluations to quantify the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a broad spectrum: at one side are exceptional facial identifiers, who recall faces they have seen only for a short time or a long time ago; at the other are people with facial agnosia, who often find it challenging to know kin, close friends and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how skilled someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I fall short. But experts "haven't extensively researched this" as much as they've studied the ability to recall a face, according to cognitive neuroscientists. It does seem that the two abilities use different brain mechanisms; for example, there is proof that superior face rememberers and face-blind individuals do about as well as each other at identifying new faces, despite their extremely distinct abilities to remember old faces.

Undergoing Facial Recognition Tests

I felt interested whether these evaluations would provide insight on why strangers look familiar. Was I someone who never forgets a face? I often recognize people more than they recognize me, and feel disappointed – a sentiment that scientists say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I excessively identify 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 multiple perspectives, 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 exactly identify them – reminiscent to my everyday experience.

I felt uncertain 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 "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Comprehending False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as particularly good for evaluating someone's memory for faces. The test-taker looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they examine a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and indicate which were in the initial group. The super-recognizer threshold is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the range, people with facial agnosia correctly guess an average of 57%.

I felt content with my performance, but also astonished. I remembered many of the old faces, but infrequently confused a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this indicator, called the mistaken recognition percentage, was 18%. Average identifiers, exceptional facial identifiers and prosopagnosics all have a false alarm rate of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a stranger's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Plausible Causes

It was proposed that I possibly possessed some exceptional facial identifier capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our memory, but super-recognizers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also likely to distinguish countenances – that is, attribute qualities to each face, such as friendliness or rudeness. Studies suggests that the later element helps people to develop and retain faces to permanent recall. While distinguishing may help me remember people, it may also trick me into seeing my grandma in a woman who has a similar air.

In moreover, it was thought I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a significant focus to faces. Others may have more false alarm moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am prone to notice the unfamiliar individual who looks like my grandmother. Indeed, one acquaintance who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes confessed she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Hyperfamiliarity 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 "identify" unfamiliar individuals. Investigating further, I read about a disorder called hyperfamiliarity for faces (HFF), in which unknown faces appear familiar. Superficially, this sounded like it could apply to me. But the handful of documented instances all took place after a medical episode such as a epileptic episode or stroke, unlike the peculiarity that I've been noticing my whole adult life.

Through investigative websites, experts have heard from about 24,000 those with facial agnosia, as well as people with all kinds of face identification difficulties, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be melting. Researchers study many of these people, using tools like the known/unknown countenances task and the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

Experts have heard from only a small number of people with possible HFF in extended periods of study.

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

{Understanding