Most people can remember the faces of their high school classmates even 35 years later. The brain has a mechanism to recognize faces, and culture may affect the process. The average person can remember 10,000 faces, but some have prosopagnosia, a disorder that makes it difficult to differentiate faces. It takes about 600 milliseconds to see and identify a face.
Most People Remember Their Classmates: Research studies have found that 90 percent of people are able to remember the faces of their high school classmates, even 35 years after their last contact. Scientists believe the brain may have a designated mechanism in place to recognize faces, which is thought to serve an evolutionary purpose, as looking at a person’s face can rapidly provide information about their age, gender, health and attractiveness for purposes of fertility. While recognizing faces is an ability shared by most neurologically healthy humans, culture may play a role in the exact process: For example, Chinese are more likely to focus on the nose, while Westerners tend to examine the eyes and then the mouth.
Learn more about facial recognition:
It is estimated that the average person can remember 10,000 different faces.
Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder in which a person is unable to differentiate individual faces; about half of the cases are cases in which people are unable to analyze faces at all, while the other half can see faces but cannot remember who they belong to.
The process of seeing and identifying another person’s face takes about 600 milliseconds.
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