Why remember a face???

In daily life, we recognize faces both holistically and also "analytically" -- that is, picking out individual parts, such as eyes or nose. But while the brain uses analytical processing for all kinds of objects -- cars, houses, animals -- "holistic processing is thought to be especially critical to face recognition," says Liu.
To isolate holistic processing as the key to face recognition, the researchers first measured the ability of study participants -- 337 male and female students -- to remember whole faces, using a task in which they had to select studied faces and flowers from among unfamiliar ones.

"Our findings partly explains why some never forget faces, while others misrecognize their friends and relatives frequently," says Liu. That's why the research holds promise for therapies for that second category of people, who may suffer disorders such as prosopagnosia (face blindness) and autism. Knowing that the mind receives a face as one whole thing and not as a collection of individual parts, "we may train people on holistic processing to improve their ability in recognizing faces," Liu says.