The nose knows, er…I mean, you know noses

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Okay here’s something just for fun from Scientific American Mind.

I KNOW THAT NOSE.

LOOK TO THE CENTER OF A FACE FOR FAMILIARITY.

By Kurt Kleiner

When you’re trying to recognize a face, the first thing

Can you recognize who this is?

you look at is the nose–whether you know it or not. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, showed subjects faces on a computer screen and tracked their eye movements. They found that most people look first just to the left of the nose, then to the center of the nose, then to the eyes. The first look was enough for people to recognize a face more than half the time, the second look increased accuracy, but the tired did not–those two glances at the nose were enough. The researchers speculate that glancing at the center of the face makes it easiest to take in enough information about the whole face to enable recognition.

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