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Remembering Names
The most common complaint that people have about their memories is that they forget people's names, even a few minutes after meeting them. You may be able to recognize their face, but you just can't dig up their name. There are two reasons why recognizing faces is much easier than recalling names.
The first reason is simply that recognition is much easier than recall. This is because with recognition, you are presented with something and you only have to determine if it is familiar or not. With recall, you actually need to retrieve a piece of information from your memory. If you were given the person's name in a multiple-choice quiz, it would become a recognition task, and you would probably pick it correctly.
The other reason is that pictures are much easier to remember than words. Since faces are things that you see and names are things that you hear, you already have an advantage towards remembering the face and not the name. This is why nametags are a helpful aid when meeting people. It lets you hear and see the names, which gives you two different ways to remember it later.
The first reason is simply that recognition is much easier than recall. This is because with recognition, you are presented with something and you only have to determine if it is familiar or not. With recall, you actually need to retrieve a piece of information from your memory. If you were given the person's name in a multiple-choice quiz, it would become a recognition task, and you would probably pick it correctly.
The other reason is that pictures are much easier to remember than words. Since faces are things that you see and names are things that you hear, you already have an advantage towards remembering the face and not the name. This is why nametags are a helpful aid when meeting people. It lets you hear and see the names, which gives you two different ways to remember it later.
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