【英语时差8,16】永远记住面孔？

Remembering Faces Forever? Are you good at remembering faces? How about the face of a stranger you passed in the supermarket aisle¹ three months ago? Or the face of a waitress who served you dinner last year? That may seem unlikely, but some people are what’s known as “super recognizers.” They can instantly recognize faces they glimpsed months and even years ago. This is interesting because it suggests that face recognition exists on a broad spectrum². Previously³, scientists thought that people fall into two basic categories. Most people have more or less the same, average ability for recalling faces. But around two percent of people can hardly recognize faces at all–a condition called prosopagnosia. The discovery that a small percentage of people are super recognizers means the overall spectrum of face recognition is more expansive than we knew. While relatively⁴ few people fall into either extreme, most of us exist somewhere in between. But that doesn’t mean that most people are equally competent at recognizing faces. Without being a super recognizer, Joe may exist somewhere in the neighborhood of strong facial recall. Whereas Jane’s talent for remembering faces might lie closer to the prosopagnosia end of things. For the most part, where you fall on the face recognition spectrum may not matter. But if, say, you’re an eyewitness⁵ in a murder trial, then your relative ability for recalling faces might become a pivotal fact in the trial.

1 aisle   

n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道

参考例句：

• The aisle was crammed with people.过道上挤满了人。
• The girl ushered me along the aisle to my seat.引座小姐带领我沿着通道到我的座位上去。

2 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

3 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

4 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

5 eyewitness   

n.目击者，见证人

参考例句：

• The police questioned several eyewitness to the murder.警察询问了谋杀案的几位目击者。
• He was the only eyewitness of the robbery.他是那起抢劫案的唯一目击者。