Can’t spot familiar faces in a crowd? It’s a disorder

Why do some people face difficulties spotting familiar faces in the crowd? It is a disorder called crowding.

People suffering with the condition often fail to recognise an individual object in a cluttered environment, says a report in the latest special issue of the Journal of Vision.

Scientists say the disorder occurs possibly due to one of the shortcuts our brains use to help us make sense of the vast amount of visual information we take in every second.

The special issue of the journal released recently contains 25 articles devoted exclusively to crowding and related topics.

The authors conducted five experiments to measure participants' recognition of a familiar face or house in a crowded display of faces or houses.

They found that face recognition was more difficult when the targeted faces were surrounded by upright faces (as seen in crowds).

This effect was not present for images of houses, or when upside-down faces were used as targets, reported the science portal EurekAlert. The results indicate that looking for a face in a crowd is difficult in part because images of upright faces interfere with one another..