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basic pattern recognition
Sep. 19th, 2005 06:42 pmFrom the annals of X-parrot is a Social Misfit: So you know how some people will say, "I'm bad with names, but I never forget a face"? I'm the opposite. I remember names okay--not great, but not bad, about average. But faces. I am shit with faces. There's this girl I meet on campus on occasion--friend of a friend, a bunch of us went out for sushi last spring. I've met her a couple times since, and she always says hi. And I always do the hesitant, "Er...hi?" thing you do when you're wondering if someone's got you confused with someone else. And then she goes, "I'm So-and-so's friend," and I go, "OH YEAH." But the thing is, it's not that I'm having trouble remembering her name or how I know her; it's that her face just isn't there in my memory at all. It's an unknown face. The event of meeting her is recorded, but not the visual aids.
I'd worry about premature senility, except this isn't a new thing. In high school I worked with these two boys--I remembered their names fine, but I never called them by them, because I could never tell them apart. They were cousins, so they looked similar, but not identical. But even if you stood them next to each other, I could easily see they were different people, but my brain could not remember which name mapped to which boy. One of them usually wore a baseball cap, so I memorized cap=one name, no cap=other, but it was problematic if the guy took it off.
I suspect I do this subconsciously as well, using obvious external markers instead of simple facial recognition, because I am terrible at recognizing people out of context, say, meeting a classmate outside of class. I'm like an actual parrot in this--change the feathers and you might as well be a different person to me. As a couple people who have met me at cons before can vouch, if I meet someone cosplaying, I will likely completely fail to recognize them out of costume, or in a different costume. And there's a girl in my apartment complex who I fear might redye her hair; I will surely not realize it's her if it's not the nice recognizable burgundy it is now. There's a possible corollary to this, in that people whose faces I do know well, I will be completely oblivious even to major changes in their appearance--I'm infamously bad at noticing new haircuts and the like.
And if you're thinking I wrote this entire little rant in an effort to remember the person initially mentioned, next time I meet her--you would be 100% correct. Wish me luck!
I'd worry about premature senility, except this isn't a new thing. In high school I worked with these two boys--I remembered their names fine, but I never called them by them, because I could never tell them apart. They were cousins, so they looked similar, but not identical. But even if you stood them next to each other, I could easily see they were different people, but my brain could not remember which name mapped to which boy. One of them usually wore a baseball cap, so I memorized cap=one name, no cap=other, but it was problematic if the guy took it off.
I suspect I do this subconsciously as well, using obvious external markers instead of simple facial recognition, because I am terrible at recognizing people out of context, say, meeting a classmate outside of class. I'm like an actual parrot in this--change the feathers and you might as well be a different person to me. As a couple people who have met me at cons before can vouch, if I meet someone cosplaying, I will likely completely fail to recognize them out of costume, or in a different costume. And there's a girl in my apartment complex who I fear might redye her hair; I will surely not realize it's her if it's not the nice recognizable burgundy it is now. There's a possible corollary to this, in that people whose faces I do know well, I will be completely oblivious even to major changes in their appearance--I'm infamously bad at noticing new haircuts and the like.
And if you're thinking I wrote this entire little rant in an effort to remember the person initially mentioned, next time I meet her--you would be 100% correct. Wish me luck!
