Face Recognition, Essay Example

The “Remembering Faces Quiz” developed by NPR demonstrated that young people have better facial recognition skills and are able to ignore distractions more effectively than older individuals. When I took this test, I answered two out of three questions correctly. When my mother answered the same test, she answered one out of three questions correctly. The scientific basis for this is that she focused on the landscapes and faces equally and was unable to recall the faces from the large amounts of information that were forced upon her. It is likely that a longer test using a larger sample size of participants would demonstrate the difference in memory between young and old individuals more drastically.

To discern the factors of the test that led to mine and my mother’s inability or ability to answer the test questions correctly, I interviewed my mother about the test process and carefully considered my own participation as well. My initial questioning towards my mother concerned whether she had an easier time answering certain questions and whether she was tried to just focus on the faces or if the landscape images were distracting. I found that my mother had the easiest time answering the first question, which had the least number of facial images and landscape distractions. My mother also informed me that she thought the landscapes were easier to remember than the faces, so she ended up focusing on them.In my case, I answered the second question wrong. The landscape images were distracting in all scenarios and I could not definitively remember if I had seen the faces or not. However, my short-term memory was able to kick in and tell me whether I had seen the facial image, although this decision wasn’t entirely conscious. Clearly, my short-term memory was not completely effective because I was only able correctly identify whether I had seen the face in two out of three questions.

A scientific study entitled “Facial Recognition Memory Deficits in Normal Aging and Senile Dementia” confirms my findings (Ferris et al., 1980). This study aimed to determine the facial recognition abilities of 167 individuals including young adults, elderly adults, and elderly adults with dementia. Unlike the NPR experiment above, this experiment demonstrated a series of faces. Then, up to 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, and 4 minutes later, the participants were asked to determine whether the face that was depicted had been shown in the sequence they were asked to view. There was a large delay in facial recognition in both the elderly adults and elderly adults with dementia compared to the young adults. These results indicate t ability the differences to store short-term information between young adults and elderly adults and that dementia in elderly adults does not affect this process.

Ultimately, both the NPR experiment and the “Facial Recognition Memory Deficits in Normal Aging and Senile Dementia” study indicate that there is a difference in the ability for young adults and elderly adults to store information in their short-term memory. As a consequence, it would be useful for older adults to reinforce their non-verbal cues to ensure that they are remembered and committed to long-term memory.

References

Ferris SH, Crook T, Clark E, McCarthy M, Rae D. (1980). Facial Recognition Memory Deficit in Normal Aging and Senile Dementia. J Gerontol, 35 (5): 707-714.