Names and Faces!

I have always been bad with names. I work in a call center, so luckily for me the name is spelled out in front of me and I can see it when needed. The members that I speak to do no always have that luxury and will often call me Hayley, Katie, Carly, or some type of similar sounding variation. For the few that like English artists from the 80’s, they can remember the song that I am named after. So this got me thinking, why are faces easier to recall than names? If I go to a bar, I can easily remember the face of the guy that bought me a drink hours earlier, but was it John? No, it was Kyle.

Why couldn’t I remember Kyle? In our lesson this week we learned about the levels of processing model of memory. LOP was first developed by Craik and Lockhart in 1972. The idea is that memories that have a deeper meaning can be converted to long term memory. What constitutes as a deeper meaning? How does it connect the “face vs. name” issue? From what I have found, we are visual learners (I know that I am). We can remember faces because we can relate to them. How someone appears can impact what we think of them. Are they attractive? How do they dress? When you hear a name there is not as much of a connection.

There are times when names are really easy to remember. When I met my husband, he said his name was Donovan and then quickly made a joke about a more famous person with the same name. This would be elaborative rehearsal. I was able to put his name with something that was already in my memory bank and then processed the information. His face had a name from the very beginning. When I met my best friend, I had to look at her work badge a few times the first few days and rehearse it, “Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie.” This is maintenance rehearsal, and is not as great at helping get information into your long term memory. After seeing her daily and doing things with her, I was able to remember it.

It wasn’t that my husband had a unique name, or that my friend has a more common one that hindered my memory, it was basic memory encoding. It is something that we all struggle with. When we meet someone new there is almost always an awkward moment trying to recall a name. Some are worse than others, but it is a normal thing. Knowing this made me feel a lot better about quite a few people in my life and the moments that I had to hope they said their name again for me without asking.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/levelsofprocessing.html

 

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