Women can remember faces better than men, because they spend more time studying features, reveals study. This technique, researchers said, can help improve anyone's memories.
The findings help to answer long-standing questions about why some people can remember faces easily while others quickly forget someone they've just met.
"Our findings provide new insights into the potential mechanisms of episodic memory and the differences between the sexes. We discovered that women look more at new faces than men do, which allows them to create a richer and more superior memory," said Jennifer Heisz, a research fellow at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences and newly appointed assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University.
She co-authored the paper with David Shore, psychology professor at McMaster and psychology graduate student Molly Pottruff.
Eye tracking technology was used to monitor where study participants looked-be it eyes, nose or mouth-while they were shown a series of randomly selected faces on a computer screen. Each face was assigned a name that participants were asked to remember.
One group was tested over the course of one day, another group tested over the course of four days.
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The implications are exciting, she said, because it means anyone can be taught to scan more and potentially have better memory.
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Source-ANI