ABSTRACT
We can quickly pick out visual differences in the people around us. We recognize individuals easily despite meeting hundreds or even thousands of people every day. (Putting names to the individuals is a separate, more difficult skill.) The presence of this ability in all humans, save for those with severe brain damage, and its early development in infants suggest that it is hardwired in our brains-that is, it is an ability we obtain at birth through our biology, as opposed to something we learn. It is also an ability found in related species such as chimpanzees (Parr et al. 2000). While our recognition is based mostly on facial characteristics, we can also pick out other bodily traits in identifying differences among people. This ability to identify individuals is crucial to our species’s considerable sociality and thus may be considered as an adaptive trait. Whether it is adaptive or not, the trait implies an ability to rapidly focus on differences in individuals that allows such identification to take place.
