Kids better than adults when it comes to face recognition

Melbourne, August 18 (ANI): Kids are better at distinguishing other children's faces than adults, scientists have found.

According to Tirta Susilo, of the psychology department at the Australian National University in Canberra, and his colleagues, kids had stronger holistic processing, which is how the brain recognises faces, for other kids than the adults did.

"When you think about it, faces are all alike. They all have to eyes, a nose, a mouth and they all share the same structure ... [yet] we find it very easy to discriminate and recognise hundreds even thousands of faces with ease,"" ABC Science quoted him as saying.

Susilo, who headed the study for a PhD, under the supervision of Dr Elinor McKone, said one reason behind kids' greater holistic processing of other childrens' faces could be because they spend so much time with each other in schools.

And the chances of the surrounding environment in contributing towards the development of holistic processing was also not ruled out.

Susilo said: "Both recognition memory and holistic processing is stronger/better for the type of faces you interact with the most in everyday life.

"For example, an Asian born in Australia would show strong holistic processing for both Asian and Caucasian faces - assuming that this person experiences both types of faces in everyday life."

The findings were published in the journal PLoS One. (ANI)