We remember names better than faces: study

London, November 14 According to a study, we remember names better than faces.

Researchers at York University in the UK suggest that when we complain about forgetting someone's name, we unfairly ask our brain.

Remembering a person's face in this situation relies on recognition, but recalling one's name is a reminder, according to the study published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

It is already well established that humans are much better in the former than in the latter, said the researchers.

They also point out that we do not realize that we have forgotten a name until we have already recognized the face.

"We rarely have to deal with the problem of knowing a name, but not a face – to remain perfectly unaware of the innumerable faces that we should recognize, but to pass in front of us on the street," researchers said.

For this study, researchers devised a "fair test", comparing names to faces on an equal footing.

They put in place an experiment to impose on the participants the same ability to remember names and faces by testing both in a game of recognition.

The results showed that participants remembered names better than faces – recognizing only 64% of faces and up to 83% of names during testing.

"Our study suggests that while many people have trouble remembering names, they are even more likely to remember faces," said Rob Jenkins of York University.

"This will surprise many people because it contradicts our intuitive understanding," said Jenkins.

"Our life experiences with names and faces have misled us about how our mind works, but if we eliminate the double standard we impose on memory, we start to see a different image," he said. he declares.

Participants had sufficient time to memorize faces and unknown names, then tested those they thought they had seen before.

The researchers then repeated the test, but this time they complicated the experiment by showing participants different images of the same face and names in different fonts.

This was to make the test as realistic as possible, the actual faces being slightly different, due to factors such as lighting and hairstyle, whenever you see them.

On average, participants recognized 73% of faces when shown the same picture and 64% when shown a different picture.

On the other hand, they recognized 85% of the names presented in the same format and 83% in different fonts and sizes.

When the researchers presented the faces and names of famous people, the participants got a much more balanced score, recognizing almost the same number of faces as names.

The results show that we are particularly hard at recognizing unknown faces, but even with the faces and names we have encountered before, we still do not get any better at recognizing faces than names. SAR
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