Hard News: Have you met thingy?
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I too am afflicted by Brown Syndrome. Fortunately I'm also a classic example of an introvert, so I'm not often put in a position to do a nameless intro.
Things also get a bit weird when you can remember someone's screen name, but not real name. And following some murder mystery drama on TV is interesting as you don't have a clue who of the half dozen suspects they are talking about.
Judging from the responses here, I'm starting to think that it is the people who CAN remember names after a single introduction who are the real freaks.
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This name thing resonates with quite a few people, huh?!
I’m normally pretty good with remembering names. Even if I meet acquaintances after years, I can usually address them by their name. I say “usually” and “normally” because sometimes - quite rarely actually - I draw a blank for no apparent reason whatsoever. But my specialty is that I reserve this disorder for really important occasions, with the most important (and best known) people, typically in a social setting when I introduce them to other very important and well-known people …
I’ve done it to the chairman of a big company (just a few months after I joined), and was mortified when I heard the wrong name come out of my mouth. Luckily he was gracious about it, but boy, it still makes me cringe. -
when I see someone write "Well, Josh, what I think is that..." online, my initial reaction is that they're being condescending, even though on a forum like this you often have to make it explicit who your comments are directed at.
Well, Josh, that's exactly what I do and I agree with you entirely.
Except if I wasn't going for comic effect, I'd say:
Josh - that's what I do too.Names are for getting a person's attention or identifying one person from another, not for throwing randomly into conversation with the person so named. I always feel like someone's trying to drum something home to me when they use my name when it's perfectly clear they're talking to me and nobody else. I don't think it causes offence unless you get to the point where you refer to someone else present as she or he, and they say who? the cat's mother?
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Names are for getting a person's attention or identifying one person from another, not for throwing randomly into conversation with the person so named. I always feel like someone's trying to drum something home to me when they use my name when it's perfectly clear they're talking to me and nobody else
And while not wanting to drag things into the gutter.
The practice of saying someone’s name during intercourse is a particularly strange one.
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I know someone who only goes out with guys called Phil for that very reason.
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It's not only strange, it's very very risky. Unless you're Phil's girlfriend, of course.
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Risky and irrelevant.
Because unless you play for the Bulldogs or are a cop in the BoP in the 80s there should, usually, be only one other person in the room.
So what’s point? To give the indication there are hundreds of other people in the room, but you’ve chosen <insert name> ?
Perhaps it started from porn movies when they tried to make it easier for people to follow the plot.
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She doesn't go out with more than one Phil at a time, guys. Jeez, you make her sound like a phil-popper
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Mark H: roflnui to that.
Unfortunately, some part of my brain then learns a new rule "whenever you see the J person, your natural instinct for her name is wrong." So then I start to say the right name and then correct myself and clearly and confidently say the wrong one.
I have a double light switch at home like that. I always want to turn the main one off, and leave the ambient one on. And i indubitably pick the wrong switch. Night after night, it's not so ambient-inducing.
Remembering number sequences used to be soooo easy... with the advent of cell phones I'm totally deprogrammed. Seriously, I used to have the photographic memory for phone numbers, whether they were spoken aloud or written down.
Luckily, I have retained this skill for words... I am a pedantic speller. If you say a word in conversation that I haven't heard before, if I've seen it written somewhere from the age of about six upwards, then <pop> I get a visual of what the word looks like, written down, and I know how to spell it. Uncanny.
Names & faces? Not so good.
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Although I completed the face recognition test with 99%... & I knew exactly where I went wrong as soon as I bumped the button.
I wonder if chicks' faces (ahem female) are any different for visual recollection?
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When I was at high school many moons ago we had a visit from the Governor-General Sir Bernard Fergusson. He was a famous leader of the ‘Chindits’ - commandos who operated deep behind the Japanese lines in Burma during World War II. He was a tall imperious looking man,the image set off perfectly by a monocle in his right eye.
He came into our classroom and immediately recognised our teacher who he had presented with an award at Government House several weeks earlier. He obviously couldn’t remember his name or what the award had been but he remembered the face and the occasion.
I can still remember the electric feeling that went through the class at this demonstration of face memory. What a skill to have if you are a leader trying to inspire followers.
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my case, since I have to remember 90 little peoples' names every day - and their parents and grandparents. I suspect there is a name for it, and I know how you feel. I so often feel really rude not remembering peoples' names, and I resort to calling them darling, love etc
I can sympathise... I used to struggle to apply names to the kids I was coaching, but there were usually four different classes of about 20 kids, one right after the other, and of course they were never in the same place for two seconds. But I would try to use a name whenever I could, and one child I called "William" for a whole term, until he looked at me and said, kind of anguished and exasperated and asked Why do you call me William?" It was then I discovered his name was "Richard".
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A poor grasp of spelling and/or grammar ought to be sufficient reason for never voting for some political parties eg down the road from our house is a huge National billboard, promising that they will have "less bureaucrats" working in the health sector. Presumably they mean "fewer'?
Sue Moroney, the Labour candidate for Hamilton East, is suffering some damage to her billboards (the last two letters of her name being cut out or defaced).
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She doesn't go out with more than one Phil at a time, guys. Jeez, you make her sound like a phil-popper
nice. u brought it all the way back around to 'she speeds'.
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I'm also yer classic introvert and not very sociable (but I am certainly not a recluse). I like people well enough, but am best with those I've known for at least a decade and preferably much longer...I always remember names & faces for that quite large group of folk, but o dear,
when I meet you, I'll probably not take aboard your name or face - unless you have a very unusual name, or face. I collect different names (having some myself) and am very aware of physical differences - comes from an interest in anatomy & portraiture. I envy those who are so much more socially couth than myself (all my family and a lot of my friends) but anything I've tried to make myself at ease with strangers just doesnt work.Having been, since babyhood, an observer on the fringes - well, it's far too late to change.
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Since I research this stuff in my day job can I ask those people who say they have 'bad memories for faces' whether they mean
1. The face is familiar but you can't put a name to it
2. The face is unfamiliar (looks like a stranger)Number 1 is extraordinarily common, Number 2 not so much.
Although I love the idea of calling #1 'Brown Syndrome' I suspect we'd have to diagnose about 75% of population as being being positioned somewhere on the 'Brown Syndrome' spectrum.
One prosaic reason why lots of people like Russell forget stuff is because they have lots they have to remember - they often forget about same percentage of material as everyone else but that turns out to be rather a lot in absolute terms.
And on the male/female thing - most research shows that women are better at recognising women's faces than men but no better at recognising men's faces.
More random research findings: people's self-ratings of their face recognition abilities have no relationship to their actual performance on lab face recognition tasks.
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I have quite a lot of #2, particularly in times of stress, but mostly #1.
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most research shows that women are better at recognising women's faces than men but no better at recognising men's faces
How does that work? - please say more, Stephen.
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One prosaic reason why lots of people like Russell forget stuff is because they have lots they have to remember - they often forget about same percentage of material as everyone else but that turns out to be rather a lot in absolute terms.
That rings true, and for me it varies from time to time. When I'm writing a report or researching one of the many new areas I'm constantly forced to get to grips with, my mind gets too chock full of info and people's names are one of the things that go to make space. Luckily they come back again, but it's dern frustrating at the time.
I easily remember numbers from years ago, but even they get squeezed out. I've lately been thinking that I've always been somewhere on the spectrum. Is it possible to become more autistic or differently emphasised as you get older?
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Russell you have just described me, except that I have a near photographic memory so I will definitely remember your face, but your name will completely escape me. First day at a new job for me is a nightmare as I will fail to remember the names of 80% of the people I will be introduced to. It can take me 6months to remember the names of everybody in a large workplace. The names from my last are beginning to fade.
I have tried hard to counter this with only limited success. I have now got to the place where I am simply open and honest about my disability and apologise for it. This is less embarrasing I think and has the upside that since people know you have such a bad memory for names they are touched when you remember theirs ;-)
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Oh and it is also why I like conferences. Everyone has on those name tags...
i wish I worked in an area where people hand out business cards too. That would help I think.
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@Stephen
#1 mainlyI also recognise facial patterns (or what are patterns to me) seeing someone and thinking I know them, but later realising they've just got the same sort of face.
Also, I used to be in customer services (in a bank, actually) and I'd find myself at a party nattering away to someone who I thought I knew and she thought she knew me and we'd finally get to the "where exactly did we meet?" stage and it would turn out that she came in every Wednesday to do the firm's banking, which would be pretty much the end of that conversation.
I used to worry that a half-recognised face would turn out to be someone I'd had a brief half-sozzled liaison with, but I guess there weren't enough liaisons to really make it a risk :-(
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Oh say, what do you guys do when someone you don't know (or don't recognise perhaps) taps you on Facebook?
Oh that one is easy. I don't have a Facebook account, or a MySpace or a Bebo or any 'social networking' site account. That helps a lot.
However I did once get an unexpected email from 'myself'. A Nominative Dobbleganger noticed my name on usenet and dropped me a line. It was a bit weird initially. Turned out the name was the only thing we had in common so the correspondence didn't last long.
There's another one who also publishes Biomedical journal articles. Which is why in most of my later papers I am Peter R Ashby.
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Remembering number sequences used to be soooo easy... with the advent of cell phones I'm totally deprogrammed. Seriously, I used to have the photographic memory for phone numbers, whether they were spoken aloud or written down.
I know exactly what you mean. My solution is that the programmed in numbers on the house phone are for other people. Me I just dial them.
My wife, whose memory for people's names is wonderful, relies on me to remember almost everthing else. I can remember the phone number of everywhere I have lived, no problem. And the street address, and what year and month moved into and out of. What year we went to Finland/St Petersburg/Talinn etc. etc. Names? only if I see them written down frequently.
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What a skill to have if you are a leader trying to inspire followers.
Apparently Richard Seddon had an incredible memory for people. On his electioneering tours of the country, he'd see people he'd met once a year ago, and ask how their kids/business/whatever they'd talked about back then was going.
I have a good memory for anecdotes like the one above, but it tends to lose the appropriate citation.
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