So my brain is(n't) weird? (names and memory)

[guids]

El D is right on with this, this is what I try to do, unfortunetly, it still doesnt stick in my brain, even after I say their name a few times abck to them. My fix for this is to call a lot of people babe, or not even mention thier name when I see them, but give them a warm greeting nonetheless, and ask a friend what thier name is. in my line of work I meet dozens of people that I recognize, but cant place, calling people babe, or giving them a huge smile can usually get me through.

[Big Poppa Smurf]

Question for you guys who suck at remembering names: if you forget someone's name, do you still remember their face, or do you just forget that you've met them? I can generally recall names and faces of people I've met months ago once, or for poker, I can usually recall faces and playing styles after playing with someone once. So I guess I'm wondering if it's because I'm good at remembering faces, or what?

[The4Aces]

For me I can recall faces of everyone... Also I can remember almost everything i see.. Its just anything auditory I am bad at remembering short term.

[BigPoppa]

I'm just as bad with names, but have a phenomenal memory for other things.

When I waited tables, I almost never wrote anything down as I could remember every table's order completely. When I was a kid, my eyesight was so bad I couldn't read the chalkboard in school; so I'd just memorize whatever the teacher said aloud as he wrote on it.

Names seem to be the only things I can't remember.

[J.Brown]

[ QUOTE ]
kipin,

I'll write more on this later, but here's the number one thing you can do to help.

"Hi, I'm kipin."
"Good to meet you, I'm Chris"
"Chris, great to meet you. So, Chris, what is good on the menu?"

Basically, immediately say their name out loud as soon as you hear it. Makes a huge difference.

I am very familiar with the get their name and then ten seconds later have no idea. So I do some little things like the above to make sure I really listened to their name and actually let it flow into my memory. Once I do that, I remember it for life.

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT

[bmxicle]

I have a very, very good memory, people comment on how good my memory is all the time and i'm also well aware of how good it is. Yet i still forget alot of people's names, and i've realized that this happens because i often don't even care what someone's name is because i didn't really care to meet them in the first place thus their name quickly becomes irrellevant to me. If it's someone i deem to be important for whatever reason then i can almost always remember their name. Does this happen to anyone else, or am i just crazy?

[disjunction]

I loved cognitive science when I was an undergrad. IIRC one of the paradigms in memory research is "Levels of Processing". The more attention you pay to something, the better you will remember it. This is exactly what you are describing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels-...cessing_effect

It's an old theory and somewhat outdated. There are all kinds of related studies that are interesting. Googling "False Fame Effect" and "Implicit Memory" can be fun. The latter term means there's some stuff you remember but you don't remember that you remember. For instance, if you are asked if the name is "famous", you are more likely to describe the forgotten names as "famous" than a random name. So you must remember it on some level, right? So why can't you get at it?

Back when I cared about these things I used to love papers by Larry Jacoby.

http://www.psych.wustl.edu/amcclab/publications.htm