Why do some people never forget a face?

[Persia]

“Face recognition is an important social skill, but not all of us are equally good at it,” says Beijing Normal University cognitive psychologist Jia Liu. But what accounts for the difference? A new study by Liu and colleagues Ruosi Wang, Jingguang Li, Huizhen Fang, and Moqian Tian provides the first experimental evidence that the inequality of abilities is rooted in the unique way in which the mind perceives faces. “Individuals who process faces more holistically” -- that is, as an integrated whole -- “are better at face recognition,” says Liu. The findings will appear in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-people.html

[TheBanana]

i dont recognise faces unless ive known the person a while. usually i go by other things, like peoples hairstyle, until ive seen them enough times to remember their face.

[Beckys_Mom]

I am BAD with faces.... I am the kind of person who will have someone walk up to me and say - Hey Geri... I look at them and think.. OMG I can't recall who this is.. i'll smile and pretend I know lol...........

[Michelle]

Even being in a business all my life seeing about three hundred people a day I never forget a face. Where exactly I know the face from or their names...forget it.

[Orcseeker]

People who learn best visually would recognize a face more than a name.

[MissMelsWell]

I"m actually VERY good with names and faces--and I suppose it's not a surprise that I'm also an extremely socially outgoing person. I rarely forget one unless they've changed in some way dramatically. I'm even better with names--those I really don't forget.

My bf on the other hand is horrible with both, but he has this weird and unique ability to place a voice. It's kind of uncanny and weird. We can be watching a cartoon, or hear a voice over on TV and he'll pipe up and say "Hey, that's that guy from that episode of Law and Order where he played the defense attorney... yadda yadda yadda" I mean it can be a totally obscure actor, who's only done a few things and he can pick out their voice. It's become a game almost. I try to disprove him by looking it up on IMDB, and he's almost always right. On the rare occasions he's wrong, I tend to do a victory dance. LOL.

[linttrap]

Facial recognition is such an important function that the brain seems to be specialized for it, and the inability to recognize faces has a special name: prosopagnosia.

Prosopagnosia (Greek: "prosopon" = "face", "agnosia" = "not knowing") is a disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired, while the ability to recognize other objects may be relatively intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage, but a congenital form of the disorder has been proposed, which may be inherited by about 2.5% of the population. The specific brain area usually associated with prosopagnosia is the fusiform gyrus.

Damage to the critical brain structures in face recognition has shown that it extends to recognizing faces other than human. Farmers who suffered brain damage to those areas have been found to lose the ability to identify each of their cows by sight, something they could do before the damage occurred.

If you Google prosopagnosia you will find that Neuropsychologists specifically test Facial Recognition because it can help to identify which parts of the brain are not working well after someone has had a stroke, traumatic brain injury or some other brain insult.

It is true that some people are just born good at facial recognition and others can't do it even if you try to teach them how. Using the brain to put together pieces of a picture (of a face) is never as efficient as just seeing it and knowing.

It's definitely a visual wholistic process, rather than a sequential assembling of the bits and pieces to make the picture.

Edited December 2, 2011 by linttrap

[Alienated Being]

I never forget a face, and I -never- forget anything bad that somebody has done for me/said to me. I have a really good memory. If you think I won't remember, you have another thing coming to you!

[Finder of Lost Things]

Good with faces and voices...not so good with names. If for some reason I do not think that you look like your name then I have an even harder time remembering and heaven help me if I meet two people at the same time who I think look like each others names, then I'm screwed up for years!

[JaySleeps]

I am one of those people who rarely forgets a face. I see people sometimes and I recognize them but cant place where in my past I knew/met them. I ran into someone I had not seen since middle school and I recognized them immediately even though their appearance had changed a lot.

Typically good with remembering names too. I am like a walking trivia machine because I always remembers the most insignificant facts.

Very good memory ... except when it comes to deadlines, due dates, etc....

[glorybebe]

WELL....the other night I was introduced to a friend's friend. I told my friend that her friend looked really familiar. The weird thing is that she said the same thing about me! The next tiem we saw each other, we sat down and figured out how we would ahve known each other. 22 years ago we were in a cooking class together! It was quite funny that we knew that we had seen each other and recognized each other so many years later!

[Persia]

I never never never never forget in my life a cute and pretty face of a lady .