It should be easy for you to recognize faces of your family and friends. But can you remember faces that you've only seen once? You might think it is very difficult.
However, studies have found a small number of people have amazing face recognisation skills. They are the so-called "super recognisers (识别器)", who can remember at least 80 percent of faces they've seen. It is unknown how many people truly have these skills.
But studies show that at least one in 50 people are super recognisers, reported the Daily Mail. Bournemouth University of UK recently carried out a study, trying to find whether super recognisers have a different way to deal with faces. They found that when these people look at faces, they spend more time looking at the person's nose. Researchers also found that these people are not particularly smarter than others. Their super ability is limited only to face recognisation. Another important finding is that there are subtypes (子类型) of super recognisation. Some super recognisers never forget faces. But for some, if you present pairs of faces to them at the same time, they can quickly decide whether the faces are of the same person or two different people.
In fact, many super recognisers say they are good at "spotting" faces in a crowd. These subtypes of super recognisation could be applied to many areas of life. For example, the skills could be very useful at a passport control checkpoint. Super recognisers could help match faces in CCTV footage. They could also help police spot known troublemakers, bad people or even missing people in crowds.
