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Forensic psychology
Forensic psychology

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2 Recognising a face

You’ve just looked at describing faces and will now turn your focus to the psychology of recognising faces, and find out how this knowledge is being incorporated into the latest composite systems being used by the police.

The next activity is a demonstration of how our minds work by recognising the whole face, rather than by remembering the individual features.

Activity 2 More famous faces

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Look at the five faces below, that have been constructed by combining the top half of one face with the bottom half of another. Your job is to work out to which celebrities the two halves belong.

Take a guess before clicking to see the faces misaligned then guess again – do you think this makes the task easier? Finally, click to reveal the answer. Did you guess correctly?

Figure 7
Figure 7: misaligned halves

Answer

Figure 8
Figure 8: misaligned halves

Answer

Figure 9
Figure 9: misaligned halves

Answer

Figure 10
Figure 10: misaligned halves

Answer

Figure 11
Figure 11: misaligned halves

Answer