Jenkins, R. orcid.org/0000-0003-4793-0435, Dowsett, A. J. and Burton, A. M. orcid.org/0000-0002-2035-2084 (2018) How many faces do people know? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 20181319. ISSN 1471-2954
Abstract
Over our species history, humans have typically lived in small groups of under a hundred individuals. However, our face recognition abilities appear to equip us to recognize very many individuals, perhaps thousands. Modern society provides access to huge numbers of faces, but no one has established how many faces people actually know. Here, we describe a method for estimating this number. By combining separate measures of recall and recognition, we show that people know about 5000 faces on average and that individual differences are large. Our findings offer a possible explanation for large variation in identification performance. They also provide constraints on understanding the qualitative differences between perception of familiar and unfamiliar faces—a distinction that underlies all current theories of face recognition.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Authors. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Sciences (York) > Psychology (York) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EUROPEAN COMMISSION 20120411 |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 15 Oct 2018 15:30 |
Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2024 01:19 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.1319 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rspb.2018.1319 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:137103 |