Some People Never Forget a Face, and Now We Know Their Secret (sciencealert.com) 30
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: A new study from researchers in Australia reveals that the people who never forget faces look "smarter, not harder." In other words, they naturally focus on a person's most distinguishing facial features. "Their skill isn't something you can learn like a trick," explains lead author James Dunn, a psychology researcher at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney. "It's an automatic, dynamic way of picking up what makes each face unique."
To see what super-recognizers see, Dunn and his colleagues used eye-tracking technology to reconstruct how people surveyed new faces. They did this with 37 super-recognizers and 68 people with ordinary facial recognition skills, noting where and for how long participants looked at pictures of faces displayed on a computer screen. The researchers then fed the data into machine learning algorithms trained to recognize faces. The algorithms, a type known as deep neural networks, were tasked with deciding if two faces belonged to the same person. "These findings suggest that the perceptual foundations of individual differences in face recognition ability may originate at the earliest stages of visual processing -- at the level of retinal encoding," Dunn and colleagues write in their paper.
The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
To see what super-recognizers see, Dunn and his colleagues used eye-tracking technology to reconstruct how people surveyed new faces. They did this with 37 super-recognizers and 68 people with ordinary facial recognition skills, noting where and for how long participants looked at pictures of faces displayed on a computer screen. The researchers then fed the data into machine learning algorithms trained to recognize faces. The algorithms, a type known as deep neural networks, were tasked with deciding if two faces belonged to the same person. "These findings suggest that the perceptual foundations of individual differences in face recognition ability may originate at the earliest stages of visual processing -- at the level of retinal encoding," Dunn and colleagues write in their paper.
The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
TLDR (Score:1)
"And now we know there sikrit"? (Score:2)
the perceptual foundations of individual differences in face recognition ability may originate at the earliest stages of visual processing
Sounds like we "know" jackshit - just some supposition based on what a "model"-generated slop appeared to show to a bunch of slowpokes.
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Correct. The article says this:
"The researchers then fed the data into machine learning algorithms trained to recognize faces."
What is "the data" here? We don't know.
The article wants to suggest that some people view portions of data more selectively but it doesn't say that. Also, what are the "earliest stages of visual processing"? They say "retinal encoding" but if that's true then the OP's description of what was done wouldn't show anything.
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names (Score:2)
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You could ride a long for while claiming to recognize people but have poor name recall by saying "Hey! It's you!" to everybody, but then they could slip in someone you could not have ever met.
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I am terrible at faces (Score:2)
Even 20 minutes later I wouldn't remember jack about the person's face or even what they were wearing. I see on TV all the time "suspect was last seen wearing a red sweater and corduroy pants" .. like I could never remember shit to that level unless they were wearing a something really ridiculous. At a conference earlier this year I met someone who I wanted to follow up with later, but then I couldn't remember exactly what he looked like even the next day and went up to the wrong person twice. It was a bit
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Snap. There's Greek word for it, but who cares?
Are you also a mathematician? My theory is that people good at maths subvert the brain's facial recognition to spot patterns in mathematical statements.
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I'm almost totally face blind. After long enough, I can figure it out, but context matters. I wouldn't recognize a co-worker at the grocery store. And ask me to describe what someone looks like? Nope.
When there are people in my dreams, they don't have faces. I know who the person is and can hear their voice, but the face just isn't part of the dream.
That's a relief (Score:4, Funny)
For a second there, I was sure that they had discovered that some of us are lizard people.
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Actually there is a trick that works (Score:2)
Pretty sure I have worse than normal facial recognition, plus thinking about other things than remembering someone's face. But, there actually is a mnemonic trick that works if you remember to use it. It goes something like this:
Latch on to the most obvious facial trait
Make some funny image or word associated with it
Repeat the word and their name many times together
Do that again later or at least until you can write it down.
There is also a similar mnemonic you can use to string together things you need to r
Re: Actually there is a trick that works (Score:1)
But now I can't breathe properly.
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Personally, I only have trouble remembering faces of people who aged a lot. Some people who I haven't seen in 30 years I instantly remember if their faces look somewhat recognizable from high school/college. Other people look so different they could pass as someone else. I've seen people in their 30s that look like a shell of their for
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"Too much drinking, crap eating, and not exercising enough eventually takes their toll."
sure, it must be because of their inferiority and not because you have simply forgotten. Could not possibly be you.
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Works perfectly right up to the point you shout 'Hey big-nose, can I have a word?' across the room :)
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I'll have to try this... though my facial recognition is so bad I'm not sure it'll help. Put it this way... if I saw my own mother in a place I didn't expect her to be, I wouldn't know it was her. I cannot picture anyone I know "in my head" - in fact, I don't seem to be able to picture ANYTHING in my head. People say "picture an apple in your mind"... and the best I can do is to think of a blurry green blob - I can "see" the colour of the apple, but no detail whatsoever. So faces are just way too complex. I
Re: I am super recognizer ... (Score:2)
You shouldn't give up your secrets so easily.
Always suspected that, (Score:2)
I'd supposed it is automatic compensation (Score:1)
Not a skill you can learn (Score:2)
We can teach it to AI but not to you. I'll bite. Why not?
At one time I could not draw a recognizable face. Then I tried. Then after some practice, I learned, now I can draw a face, and it's recognizable.
But you couldn't do that.
Prove me right.
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Why can't you teach a large knowledge base to a LLM but not to a person? Because neural networks get a very efficient encoding for a very specific task while humans need to process everything through sensory input and everything is mixed with noise. Listening to a lecture you do not only remember the content but also the voice of the speaker, the color of the walls and possibly what your annoying neighbor was playing on their smart phone. Not even speaking about the noise like small variations in the voice
boop boop (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
No, it's not at the level of "retinal encoding," which is essentially the same across many species, including reptiles.
What about the opposite? (Score:2)
I wonder if they'll do the same thing for those with mild "face blindness" or others who are absolutely terrible at remembering faces.
I don't mean proper prosopagnosia, which can be caused by brain damage or genetics, but the milder form. Maybe they'd find a similar function where people are failing to look at and catalog the distinctive features for some reason.