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In my mid-20s, I noticed my elderly relative through the window of a café. I felt astonished – she had passed away the previous year. I gazed for a short time, then remembered it couldn't possibly be her.

I'd encountered similar experiences all through my life. Occasionally, I "recognized" a person I was unacquainted with. Occasionally I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger resembled – for instance my elderly relative. Other times, a visage simply had a vague familiarity I couldn't recognize.

Investigating the Spectrum of Face Identification Experiences

Recently, I became curious if other people have these odd encounters. When I questioned my companions, one mentioned she regularly sees persons in random places who look familiar. Others at times confuse a unfamiliar individual or celebrity for someone they know in real life. But some described nothing of the kind – they could effortlessly recognize people they'd met and people they hadn't.

I felt intrigued by this diversity of responses. Was it just longing that made me see my grandma that day – or some kind of mental glitch? Scientific investigation has found we spend about approximately 900 seconds 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 interpret the same thing.

Understanding the Spectrum of Facial Recognition Abilities

Researchers have created many assessments to measure the capacity to recognize faces. There exists a wide range: at one end are exceptional facial identifiers, who recognize faces they have seen only for a short time or a distant past; at the other are people with prosopagnosia, who often find it challenging to recognize relatives, dear acquaintances and even themselves.

Some evaluations also capture how good someone is at determining if they have not seen a face before. This is where I suspect I am deficient. But scientists "haven't thoroughly investigated this" as much as they've looked at the capacity to recognize a face, according to neuroscience experts. It does seem that the two capabilities use separate brain mechanisms; for example, there is evidence that exceptional facial identifiers 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.

Completing Facial Recognition Assessments

I felt curious whether these evaluations would provide insight on why unfamiliar individuals look familiar. Was I someone who constantly recalls a face? I often remember people more than they remember me, and feel let down – a feeling that experts say is common for super-recognizers. But maybe I over-recognize faces – to the extent that even some new faces look recognizable.

I was sent several person recognition tests. I completed them, feeling confused at times. In one, called the Cambridge Face Memory Test, I had to look at black-and-white photos of a face from different viewpoints, then find it in arrays. During another test that told me to pick out celebrities from a mix of photos, many of the faces felt at least familiar, but I couldn't quite place them – comparable to my actual experience.

I felt less than confident about my results. But after evaluation of my results, I had accurately recognized 96% of the celebrity faces. The finding was that I qualified as a "near-exceptional facial identifier".

Understanding False Alarm Rates

I also did exceptionally in the previously seen/unfamiliar faces task, which was described as notably useful for assessing someone's recall for faces. The subject looks at a sequence of 60 black-and-white photos, each of a distinct face. Then they review a series of 120 analogous photos – the original series plus 60 new faces – and identify which were in the initial group. The exceptional facial identifier cutoff is roughly 80%; I recognized 78% of the faces I'd seen. On the other side of the continuum, people with prosopagnosia accurately identify an average of 57%.

I felt satisfied with my score, but also surprised. I recognized many of the old faces, but infrequently misidentified a new face for one that I'd seen before. My score on this metric, called the false alarm rate, was 18%. Average identifiers, superior face rememberers and those with facial agnosia all have a mistaken recognition percentage of about 30% on average. So why was I misidentifying a unfamiliar individual's face for my grandmother's?

Examining Possible Causes

It was theorized that I possibly possessed some super-recognizer capacities. Everyone has a catalogue of the faces we know in our recall, but exceptional facial identifiers – and likely borderline straddlers like me – have a relatively large and high-resolution catalogue. We're also possibly to individuate faces – that is, ascribe characteristics to each face, such as approachability or rudeness. Scientific investigation suggests that the latter helps people to develop and retain faces to long-term memory. While differentiating may help me recognize people, it may also mislead me into seeing my grandmother in a woman who has a analogous presence.

In addition, it was considered I might be "an engaged facial observer", meaning I pay a considerable notice to faces. Others may have more incorrect identification moments, thinking they identify someone they don't know. But because I tend to look closely at faces, I am inclined to notice the unfamiliar individual who similar to my grandmother. Indeed, one friend who said she doesn't make facial recognition mistakes admitted she doesn't really look at the people around her.

Researching Over-familiarity for Faces

These tests helped me understand where I positioned on the range. But I wanted to understand more about what is happening in the brain when we "recognize" unfamiliar individuals. Examining further, I read about a condition called excessive facial recognition (HFF), in which unrecognized faces appear known. On the surface, this sounded like it could pertain to me. But the handful of reported cases all took place after a medical episode such as a convulsion or cerebral accident, unlike the quirk that I've been noticing 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 person recognition problems, including perceptual alterations, like when faces appear to be dissolving. Researchers study many of these people, using instruments 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 spectrum, with some people who think all visages is recognizable, and others, like me, who only experience it a multiple instances a month.

{Understanding