Some people say they never forget a face, a claim now bolstered by psychologists at Harvard University who've discovered a group they call "super-recognizers": those who can easily recognize someone they met in passing, even many years later.

The new study suggests that skill in facial recognition might vary widely among humans. Previous research has identified as much as 2 percent of the population as having "face-blindness," or prosopagnosia, a condition characterized by great difficulty in recognizing faces. For the first time, this new research shows that others excel in face recognition, indicating that the trait could be on a spectrum, with prosopagnosics on the low end and super-recognizers at the high end.

The research is published in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, and was led by Richard Russell, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, with co-authors Ken Nakayama, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and Brad Duchaine of the University College London.

The research involved administering standardized face recognition tests. The super-recognizers scored far above average on these tests-higher than any of the normal control subjects.

"There has been a default assumption that there is either normal face recognition, or there is disordered face recognition," says Russell. "This suggests that's not the case, that there is actually a very wide range of ability. It suggests a different model-a different way of thinking about face recognition ability, and possibly even other aspects of perception, in terms of a spectrum of abilities, rather than there being normal and disordered ability."

Super-recognizers report that they recognize other people far more often than they are recognized. For this reason, says Russell, they often compensate by pretending not to recognize someone they met in passing, so as to avoid appearing to attribute undue importance to a fleeting encounter.

"Super-recognizers have these extreme stories of recognizing people," says Russell. "They recognize a person who was shopping in the same store with them two months ago, for example, even if they didn't speak to the person. It doesn't have to be a significant interaction; they really stand out in terms of their ability to remember the people who were actually less significant."

One woman in the study said she had identified another woman on the street who served as her as a waitress five years earlier in a different city. Critically, she was able to confirm that the other woman had in fact been a waitress in the different city. Often, super-recognizers are able to recognize another person despite significant changes in appearance, such as aging or a different hair color.

If face recognition abilities do vary, testing for this may be important for assessing eyewitness testimony, or for interviewing for some jobs, such as security or those checking identification.

Russell theorizes that super-recognizers and those with face-blindness may only be distinguishable today because our communities differ from how they existed thousands of years ago.

"Until recently, most humans lived in much smaller communities, with many fewer people interacting on a regular basis within a group," says Russell. "It may be a fairly new phenomenon that there's even a need to recognize large numbers of people."

The research was funded by the U.S. National Eye Institute and the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council.

有些人声称他们对别人的面孔过目不忘，现在这种说法得到了哈佛大学心理学家的支持。他们发现有一种人可以被称为"超级识别者"，他们能够轻松地认出哪怕是多年前擦肩而过的面孔。

这项新研究指出不同的人在面孔识别能力上可以有很大差异。以往的研究已经确认，在全部人群中有2%属于"脸盲"，又称面孔失认症，表现为识别面孔非常困难。而这项新研究第一次发现另外一些人具有超常的面孔识别能力，这意味着面孔识别能力可能像一个连续的光谱，最低的一端是面孔失认症，最高的一端则是"超级识别者"。

这一研究发表在《心理环境通报与评论》上，第一作者是哈佛大学心理学系的博士后Richard Russell，其他作者包括哈佛大学的心理学教授Ken Nakayama和Edgar Pierce，以及伦敦大学学院的Brad Duchaine。

该研究使用了标准化的面孔识别测验。那些"超级识别者"的测验分数远高于平均值，也高于所有普通对照组的被试。

"以往的默认假设是：一个人要么有正常的面孔识别能力，要么就是面孔识别障碍，"Russell说，"但我们的研究发现不是这样，实际上面孔识别能力有很广的分布区间。这表明了另一种模型--换一种方式去看面孔识别能力，或许还可以扩展到知觉的其他方面--把它们看成连续的光谱，而不是'正常'和'障碍'的两极。"

超级识别者报告说，他们认出别人的频率远远高于自己被别人认出的频率。Russell说，他们因此常常假装没有认出曾经擦肩而过的某个人，以免显得对偶遇的过客过分热情。

"超级识别者有一些惊人的经历，"Russell说，"例如他们能认出两个月前和自己在同一家商店购物的人，即使他们没跟那人说过话。他们不需要与别人有过特别的交流，照样能认出对方。他们能记住那些实际上并不重要的人，由此可见他们的面孔识别能力确实超出常人。"

参与研究的一名妇女说，她曾经在大街上认出另一个女人--五年前曾经在另一个城市为她上菜的服务员。她非常准确地记得那个女人曾经在另一个城市做服务员。超级识别者往往能够在别人的容貌发生很大变化的情况下（如衰老或头发颜色的改变）依旧认出他们。

如果面孔识别能力确实有个体差异，那么对这一能力的测验在目击者证词的评估和某些职位（如保安或检查身份的）的面试中就可以起到重要作用。

Russell推理道，超级识别者和面孔失认者也许只有在今天才能从人群中区分出来，因为我们生活的社区已经大大不同于几千年以前的样子了。

Russell说："直到不久之前，大多数人还都居住在较小的社区，很少有人固定地在一个群体内进行互动。需要认出大量的人也许还是一个相当新的现象。"

该研究由美国国家眼科研究所和英国经济与社会研究委员会资助。
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