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posted by chromas on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the face-rings-a-bell dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Never forget a face? Research suggests people know an average of 5,000 faces

For the first time scientists have been able to put a figure on how many faces people actually know- a staggering 5,000 on average.

The research team, from the University of York, tested study participants on how many faces they could recall from their personal lives and the media, as well as the number of famous faces they recognised.

[...] Dr Rob Jenkins, from the Department of Psychology at the University of York, said: "Our study focused on the number of faces people actually know- we haven't yet found a limit on how many faces the brain can handle.

[...] For the study, participants spent an hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible -- including people they went to school with, colleagues and family. They then did the same for famous faces, such as actors, politicians, and other public figures.

The participants found it easy to come up with lots of faces at first, but harder to think of new ones by the end of the hour. That change of pace allowed the researchers to estimate when they would run out of faces completely.

The participants were also shown thousands of photographs of famous people and asked which ones they recognised. The researchers required participants to recognise two different photos of each person to ensure consistency.

The results showed that the participants knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces.

R. Jenkins, A. J. Dowsett, A. M. Burton. How many faces do people know? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018; 285 (1888): 20181319 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1319


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by donkeyhotay on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:57PM (1 child)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:57PM (#747642)

    A couple of years ago I met someone who has prosopagnosia, commonly known as "face blindness". This woman, who is nearing 50, has had this all her life and learned from an early age how to use other indicators in order to distinguish people close to her. For instance, she remembers that one daughter has blue eyes, while the other has brown. Otherwise, she cannot tell her two daughters apart. It takes her a long time to get to "know" someone well enough to "recognize" them. She travels a lot, doing public speaking, and eventually made a decision at her talks to just come right out and tell people that she has face blindness. She tells people that it is helpful to re-introduce themselves to her if it's been more than a few minutes since she's looked at them -- just a quick, "Hi, it's Bob," sort of thing helps.

    I had never heard of the condition before her talk, but I've been fascinated with the idea ever since. So, most people know about 5,000 faces. Imagine not really knowing even one face -- not even your spouse or child. It's something nearly everyone just takes for granted.
                 

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:45PM (#747892)

    I've got issues like that. For me, it's likely the result of having no ability to visualize, so if there's any changes, it's extremely hard to identify people, and that includes myself if I shave or get a different haircut.

    But, on the flipside, I'm pretty good at telling identical twins apart and excellent with micro expressions as I can't really see the whole face at once.