Facial recognition

Face recognition represents a complex cognitive challenge for humans and animals as they all contain the same features, eyes, nose and mouth, but the size and spatial arrangement, the configuration, of facial features is unique in every face. In humans, face recognition is accomplished through a combination of feature and configural processing, but it is this latter skill that is believed to be the most important for the recognition and memory of many different faces over the course of a lifetime. These skills require many years to develop and can be impaired in certain developmental disorders, like autism. Studies have shown that animals, like nonhuman primates, birds and some mammals, are also able to recognize the faces of fellow group members, however, there is strong debate over whether these processes utilize the same configural skills as are present in humans.