You Can Learn to Remember: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life pdfdrive com

matching names and faces
M
ost of us tend to be able to recognize a face that we have seen before. What
we find difficult is remembering the name that goes with it. One of the most
pleasing everyday benefits of an improved memory is the ability to match names
and faces after only a brief introduction – even if that introduction was several
years ago.
The key is to link together the face, name and place in a chain of
association. When you are introduced to someone, study their face. If you were
to create a caricature of the face, what parts would you exaggerate? Does the
face look warm or cold; happy or sad; vital or tired; confident or shy? Ethically,
of course, making judgments based on appearance is highly dubious. However,
studies have shown that subjects asked to make personality assumptions purely
on someone’s “look” benefitted from greatly improved recall of that person’s
name. For the purposes of your own memory, lay the ethical question aside (but
don’t let your judgments influence the impressions you form about the person).

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Say you are introduced to a woman called Valerie Night ingale. She has a happy
face, pointed nose and soft voice. You might visualize a beautiful bird swooping
into a valley, singing happily. The valley triggers the name Valerie and, as the
nightingale is a bird famous for its “voice”, the birdsong triggers the memory of
her surname; the pointed nose reinforces the bird idea. Condense the image:
visualize the bird nesting in her hair. When you come to recall her name, her
face will prompt the image of the bird in her hair, thus triggering the chain of
association.
what’s in a name?
EXERCISE FOURTEEN
This exercise will give you practice in forming images and associations that will
help you remember names and faces. To simulate a first meeting, do the exercise
with a friend.
1. From a pile of magazines and newspapers, cut out 10 pictures of unfamiliar
faces for each of you. If the photos don’t have captions to identify them, make up
appropriate names and write them on the backs of the pictures.
2. Swap your pictures with those your friend has cut out and named. Lay them
out and study the faces before checking the names. Work on your initial
impressions. What might the person do for a living? Is the face pleasant, stern,
time-worn, jovial, anxious, mischievous, and so on? Where might the person
live?
3. Let your imagination form associations between the faces and the names.
Limit the time you spend doing this to less than a minute for each face.
4. Put the pictures to one side and wait for about fifteen minutes, or longer if you
like. Test your partner by showing them the photos and covering up the names.
Ask your partner to test you. How many names did you recall correctly?