ABSTRACT
The most important source of information that we use to identify someone in daily life is the face. Burton, Wilson, Cowan, and Bruce (1999) demonstrated this rather dramatically when they showed that students could accurately identify their lecturers from low-quality CCTV images, provided that the face was visible. Other information from clothing, gait, and body shape was much less important for recognition. In the modern world we are each familiar with literally thousands of faces-from home and from work, and through the media-politicians, actors, sports stars. Human faces are all very similar one to another, and so our visual memories for faces are in some ways rather remarkable. However, although visual memory for faces is remarkable, it is not infallible-and errors of person identifi cation abound.
