题型：阅读选择 题类：常考题 难易度：普通
北京市人大附中九年级下学期英语限时练习(2)
Some people claim they" never forget a face". But what does that saying mean? Is there really no limit to the number of faces a person can remember? A new study at the University of York in England has found that, on average, people can remember as many as 5,000 faces.
The study is the first time that scientists have been able to put a number to the abilities of humans to recognize faces. The research team tested people on how many faces they could remember from their personal lives and in the media. They also tested them to see how many famous faces they recognized. Rob Jenkins works in the psychology department at the University of York. He said the researchers' study centered on the number of faces people actually know. He said the researchers were not able to discover whether there is a limit on how many faces the brain can handle.
In the study, people spent one hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible. At first, they found it easy to come up with many faces. But by the end of the hour, they found it harder to think of new ones. Their change in speed let the researchers estimate when they would have run out of faces completely.
The results showed that these people knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces. Jenkins explained that some people may have a natural ability for remembering faces." There are differences in how much attention people pay to faces and how well they process the information," he said. Jenkins also said it could be because of different social environments. Some people may have grown up in more populated places. Therefore, they may have had more social contact throughout their lives.
The people in the study included 25 men and women between 18 and 61 years old. Researchers think age may be an interesting area for further research. "It would be interesting to see whether there is a peak age for the number of faces we know", Jenkins said. He said it is possible that we gather more faces throughout our lifetime. But, he added, there also may be an age at which we start to find it harder to remember all of those faces.
The study suggests our facial recognition abilities enable us to deal with the many different faces we see on the screens, as well as those we know, like family and friends. Today, facial recognition technology is used in many ways, including by law enforcement agencies to prevent crime and violence. Governments use it to keep secret areas secure and, in extreme cases, control populations. .Even Facebook uses facial recognition. For example, when you "tag" or name a friend, Facebook technology may recognize the person's face from a different picture you had shared before.
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