Why can't you remember the face of your loved one. Faces in the crowd

Separate long-term and short-term memory. Short-term memory is also called working memory, and with its help, sensory images are remembered for several hours or days. Long-term memory remembers indefinitely for a long time. Long-term memory is further subdivided into episodic and semantic. Developments and any personal experience are classified as episodic memory. Vocabulary, various phenomena, recognition of persons and objects, events are referred to the semantic part of memory.

If the memory of people, animals and things in their appearance, sound and smell is impaired, this phenomenon is called agnosia. There are sound and visual agnosia, tactile and taste. Visual agnosia is also called mental blindness, and this concept includes prosopagnosia, objective and, presumably, misrecognition of words and letters, called alexia. This also includes metamorphopsia, or distortion of the perception of objects, micro- and macropsia, namely a decrease or increase in the real volumes of an object.

prosopagnosia

If there are disturbances in the temporal parts of the brain, which is important - on both sides, then there is a distorted recognition of faces and objects, their misrecognition. If a person is not able to recognize faces, this is called prosopagnosia, and if he is confused in recognizing familiar things, this is object agnosia.

Some patients do not even recognize their own face in the mirror, but at the same time they retain the memory of all other signs, and as soon as something reminds him of the person standing opposite, he remembers everything he knows about this person. Previously, it was believed that the disorder is very rare, and is most often caused by traumatic brain injuries of a different nature. But for last years it turned out that at least 1 person in 50 has such an ailment of varying severity, although at the same time they have no history of injuries or deviations from developmental standards, and such people are also doing well with vision. Difficulties in face recognition are now believed to begin in early childhood, and may be hereditary.

Some people may confess to their condition, but in general, prosopagnosia remains a very little understood disorder, because most healthy people they can't even imagine how it's possible not to recognize faces. Many sufferers have learned to live with the disease, but most feel guilty and anxious when they fail to recognize familiar faces. Some do not know that they suffer from this disease, but even those who do prefer not to talk about it either at work or among friends. This disease is poorly understood, and therefore patients are rightly afraid of getting fired instead of words of support.

Treatment

Any cognitive disorders are difficult to correct, and the search for drugs that could make life easier for patients is still ongoing. Most often, a variety of nootropics are prescribed, but the list of conditions that can be alleviated in this way is very small. Improvements occur with cerebral vascular insufficiency, with the consequences of a stroke and cerebral infarction, with depressive states, with asthenia and craniocerebral injuries.

In this disease, much more importance should be given to various memory training exercises. There are quite a few special exercises for this, most of them can be performed in. Memorization of poems, texts and melodies is used, drawing helps a lot. It is often easier for those suffering from this disease to assimilate information that is emotionally colored, has associations from tactile sensations or situational associations.

Memory training
> How to remember faces and names
Memorizing faces

As a rule, we have to remember faces along with the names of their owners or some minimal information about them. The need to remember individual faces appears quite rarely, most often it is the memorization of people in the queue when you need to leave it, all other situations of the need to remember the faces of people without information about them, rather, can be attributed to the specifics of some professions (watchman, security guard etc.).

However, the ability to remember faces without any information about them can be useful to everyone. For example, if you became an unwitting witness to a crime or an accident (although this can already be called information). In any case, before moving on to examples of remembering faces (with and without names), get acquainted with some face characteristics, which you can (should) pay attention to when meeting each new person.

Naturally, the list of these characteristics is very large, and in a real situation, depending on the amount of time, you will be able to pay attention to only a part of the characteristics, to those that are most striking, that is, to the distinctive features of the face. However, for a more successful memorization of these features, you need to know the parameters by which one or another part of the face is described, as well as options for individual features.

Of course, the list below (or description scheme) does not contain all the characteristics of facial features, so you can add others to them. Even if you don't intend to get involved in the development of memory for faces, studying this list in detail will help you become more attentive to the features of human faces, which in itself will lead to more successful memorization of them.

So here is the list:

Head

Before turning to the characteristics of individual facial features, look at what happens to the head of a person as a whole.

To size:

By form:

And also in general, in general impression head can be:

Hair

Hair is not the best guide for remembering a person, because this is exactly what is easiest to change in your appearance - dye, cut, make a ponytail, put on a wig in the end. And a person can make changes of this kind at any time.

Often a change in hairstyle changes a person beyond recognition, which once again confirms the need for a more careful attitude to other characteristics of a person's appearance. However, the ability to characterize human hair, of course, will also come in handy. Only, perhaps, it is not necessary to give the primary role to remembering hair (as is often done), especially if you remember the appearance of a woman.

General impression:

By lenght:

By density:

Other Features:

Color:

Forehead

Brows

Eyelashes

Eyes

Eyes are a very important characteristic of a person's appearance. If you learn to differentiate and remember eyes well, then this may already be (almost) enough to recognize a person. No wonder the first thing that criminals and all sorts of secret agents try to hide is their eyes.

In each eye, but rather in the look, there is something completely unique and elusive, depending, probably, more on the personality of the person. Therefore, despite a fairly large list of possible parameters for describing the eyes, it may not be enough at all. Often, for accurate characterization and / or memorization, it is more important to catch something special and unique in the eyes and look.

And yet the eyes can have the following characteristics:

After describing the parameters of the analysis of the eyes, the list of looks (kind, soft, hard, aquiline, evil, cunning ... etc.) is asked, but I'm afraid that it can take more than a dozen pages and actually turn into to the list personality trait, so I leave this fascinating and useful activity to your discretion.

Nose

The nostrils of the nose can be:

cheekbones

Ears

As a rule, people do not often pay attention to the structure of the ears, and, by the way, they can become a very, very characteristic feature, since they are very, very different. Of course, in some people they are covered with hair, but such people are still a minority. So, the ears are:

Mouth and lips

Chin

Cheeks

Skin on the face

A) perfectly smooth, slightly wrinkled or wrinkled,
b) with large or inconspicuous pores,
c) excessively dry (flaky), normal or oily (shine),
d) light or swarthy, reddish, pale, blush,
e) with pockmarks, scars, pimples.

additional characteristics

A person can wear GLASSES, while they can be of various shapes: round, square, rectangular, trapezoid, unusual shape. The frame can be plastic or metal (white or yellow metal). Glasses can be with tinted glasses. Frames can be of different colors.

In addition, women (and sometimes men) can wear in the ears (and not only in the ears) earrings. Earrings can be large, medium, small, with or without stones, made of white or yellow metal, plastic, wooden, exotic. There can be one in each ear and several, an earring can be in only one ear.

Men can wear mustache, sideburns, beard various shapes. You can successfully use them when memorizing faces, but do not forget that a person can change all these additional characteristics at any time.

*** Exercise 43.

Here are some photographs of people. Try to describe each person according to the above list of characteristics. It is better to perform the exercise in writing, using the same wording in the description as in the list. This exercise is not aimed at developing memory itself, but at developing the ability to more clearly notice facial features, to pronounce them, which naturally entails better memorization in combination with other methods.

You can record the characteristics of the face of the person shown in the first photo by looking directly at the plan (list of characteristics). When describing the second person, try to remember the parameters of the analysis of facial features on your own, only occasionally looking into the plan (you can change the sequence of the description, but the main thing is to indicate all the parameters in each paragraph) and referring to it.

Try to describe the third person in as much detail as possible, without looking into the plan. Then see what features of the face you forgot to describe (for example, you described the thickness of the eyebrows, but forgot to indicate the shape, etc.) Practice some more using photos of your friends.

*** Exercise 44.

In this exercise, you should try not only to describe the faces while looking at the photo, but also try to repeat the noted characteristics of the faces after a while. There are two photographs in front of you. Describe verbally or write down the characteristics of the faces of the people depicted on them. Then take a break, take a short break and, without going back to the photos and your notes, write down everything you remember about the faces of these people.

Could you name the most distinctive features of these faces? Would the characteristics you remember help you recognize these people in the future? Could someone else recognize these people (individually) among others if they used your last description?

*** Exercise 45.

Before you is a photograph of a man. Look at her for 2-3 minutes, trying to analyze his face during this time according to the scheme. Then cover the photo with a sheet of paper and try to answer the following questions (read the questions after the photo is closed): Tick the correct statements. The man had

Open the photo and check if your answers are correct.

You can perform the last three exercises as many times as you like, using photographs of acquaintances and relatives that you have, as well as photographs cut from magazines and newspapers.

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For as long as I can remember, I've always had trouble recognizing people. To remember a person, I need to communicate with him for a long time and regularly, otherwise I cannot remember him by sight. As a child, this did not bother me too much, and I did not know that other people were not like that. But in adulthood it became a serious problem. Now I am 35, I work in a large company (there are about 200 employees in the office).
I constantly get into difficult situations because of this particularity of mine, because. It's very hard to remember new people. If a new employee comes to our small department, then this is not so scary, because. I remember the place where this person is sitting, and gradually I begin to transfer this person to the category of memorized ones. It usually takes about a month to fully memorize. This is provided that I know exactly where the person is sitting, greet him in the morning and see him during the day in our department, but do not communicate at work. If I meet this person in the corridor, then, most likely, I simply will not recognize him. After about a month, I already begin to recognize a person by their gait, clothes, and even begin to remember the face. Then there comes a moment when I completely remember the person and can already easily recognize him in the corridor and even on the street. True, there is still no confidence on the street, especially if the person is dressed in something new and I will meet him far from work after hours.

With those whom I see every day, friends, close people, good acquaintances, there is no such problem. I can easily recognize everyone. Moreover, somewhere in the brain detailed data about each such “remembered” person (clothes, voice timbre, gait, facial expressions, gestures) is stored. I perfectly remember the details of conversations with this person, I can quote something that this person told me many years ago, I remember a bunch of little things like the color and style of sandals that my friend was wearing when we walked together along the embankment in 1993 .

But when it comes to new people ... The worst thing is when a new employee is hired and I have to work with him. Usually a person is taken to all departments, introduced. I forget his face and name as soon as the person is out of sight. I cannot describe it at all; the most maximum - something like "girl, beautiful, tall." Everything. I do not remember the face, color and length of the hair. I can remember clothes if it is something strange, ridiculous, unusual. But it must be something out of the ordinary. I really sympathize with unusual people who are easy to remember (overweight, with piercings, tattoos, scars, etc.). A year ago, the office was renovated and everyone was transferred to new places. I almost lost my mind, because there were several people whom I recognized only by their places (I knew where they were sitting), but I could not find them by their faces.

For the past three months, I have been constantly worrying about the fact that I just can’t remember the two new namesake lawyers. They work in the same office and from time to time one or the other calls me. Because I do not communicate with them for a long time, then I still can’t remember them. Sometimes I run into them in the hallway and I realize that this is one of them only when they start discussing legal issues with me. Several times there was a situation where I didn’t immediately understand that they were lawyers (there are other employees from other departments whom I can’t remember) and I had a hard time building a conversation so that it became clear who I was talking to at all. There was a very difficult situation for me when one of them asked me to bring her documents, I went into the office and did not know which table to go to (the tables are at opposite ends), because. I didn’t remember which one I had talked to in the corridor before. I was lucky that one of them reacted to me, and I realized that it was she who was waiting for the documents. They would probably take me for a madwoman if they knew that I had been talking with them for three months and did not remember their faces.

And how hard it is when someone comes up to me in the corridor and asks me to send him something. I have to twist it - ask this person to send me a letter with a request first, so that I do not forget about his request.
It's hard to watch movies with a lot of characters. Sometimes you have to watch the beginning several times, because. I can't remember anyone at once. It helps a lot if I watch with my husband. He tells someone where.
By the way, my own face also seems very unmemorable to me. Before, I didn’t understand at all how my friends would recognize me. Once I was shocked by the fact that a stranger approached me on the street and said that he recognized me from a photograph that he saw in my classmate's photo album. A photograph showing a class of 40 people. 40, Carl! For me it's fantastic.

Why post in the community? I want to know if there are people with a similar problem. Maybe this is a common problem, but it's just not being discussed? How hurtful is it to tell a person that you cannot remember him, and that it will take time? At work, I told only one colleague about my problem, who helps me navigate when I once again cannot remember a person.

There is a common theory that a beautiful face is hard to forget. But recently, researchers from the University of Jena (Germany) refuted it. Rather, they managed to prove that it is not entirely true.

In a study published in scientific journal Neuropsychologia, scientists showed a group of volunteers pictures of various people. At the same time, half of the faces could be considered beautiful, and the second - not very, but the number of appearance features for all was approximately equal.

During the demonstration, the electrical activity of the subjects' brains was recorded. After some time, they were shown the photographs again and asked if they had seen certain people before.

As it turned out, the volunteers were more likely to remember ugly faces. They were more likely to recognize beautiful faces only in those cases when the “beauties” had unusual facial features, like Angelina Jolie. If they were shown the faces of beautiful people whose pictures they had not previously seen, then the subjects often said that they knew them.

Experts believe that when we see a beautiful face with the right features, it seems to us already familiar. Therefore, we often make mistakes in recognition. If the face is ugly, then it is easier to remember it, since usually some remarkable features, such as a long nose or a large mouth, make the appearance ugly.

"The test showed that subjects tend to remember unattractive faces if there are no remarkable features in beautiful ones," study authors Holger Wiese, Caroline Altmann and Stefan Schweinberger said.

When communicating with industry colleagues at one of the conferences, you do not want to rely on the standard phrase: "Good afternoon, my name is ..." or on a badge with your name and surname. You want to stand out with something original to make an unforgettable impression on people. In fact, it is not as difficult as it might seem at first glance.

What is the relationship between memory and appearance?

The scientific studies that have highlighted the differences between memory and appearance tell us that non-standard details are the most likely to stand out. You can meet a person in a public place, look at him for a few seconds and remember this meeting for a long time. An older lady might amaze you with a luxurious red dress, a stranger sitting opposite you in the waiting room with a pocket watch or a pleasant compliment.

Psychologists say that the most beautiful person in the room cannot automatically be ranked among the most memorable people. Appearance types are divided by skin color, eyes and hair, and the rarest of them are the most memorable. It is unlikely that you will remember another long-haired brunette from several dozens of the same type of girls, but you will remember the red-haired lady with freckles for a long time.

Some of the most memorable people are not distinguished by the beauty of top models or article duchesses. But their unique characteristics(protruding ears, an interesting slit in the eyes or a hooked nose), coupled with unusual behavior, make others pay attention to them.

Less attractive faces are remembered more

It is believed that ideal facial features and external attractiveness attract attention. However, experts are quick to debunk this myth, arguing that we most often remember less attractive faces. This became clear from the data scientific research held in 2014. Distinguishing features or flaws (such as scars or birthmarks) are more likely to stick in your memory. These findings may explain why people remember perfectly ordinary strangers, while forgetting perfect-featured faces that most people think can be considered beautiful.

Understanding beauty

Other studies show that beautiful people can be better understood because they get the most attention when they communicate. One study found that we tend to pay more attention to attractive fellows on a subconscious level, resulting in a deeper understanding of personality. During the experiment, strangers took part, who spent three minutes with each other in a confined space. The results supported the assumption that physically more attractive individuals are more desirable to interact with.

About eye magnetism

Further analysis of the results of the study revealed the phenomenon of beauty in the eyes of the interlocutor. The author of the experiment, Dr. Lorenzo, and his team found that positive impressions are directly related to the nature of communication. Agree that not all people are lucky to be born dazzlingly beautiful, but they have good chances to please with the help of their inner charm and charm. These findings are important for all people with low self-esteem. Fortunately, interpersonal attraction is made up of a number of factors, including personality traits and personal taste preferences.

"Two of a Kind"

The researchers also found that the most adequate impression is made on each other by individuals with a typical average appearance. This can be explained by the fact that people of average attractiveness are not used to judging someone "by the cover." It is customary to treat a beautiful book more politely and read more carefully, but a regular-bound edition can be read to holes. Thus, people with attractive facial features can expect increased attention, while individuals with ordinary appearance are perceived in a more positive way.

Conclusion

Regardless of how you look, people make an intuitive impression of you. They will remember not your beautiful eyes, but the pleasant sensations that communication with you left. The first impression turns out to be a more important aspect in assessing your personality as a whole. Give a stranger a compliment and he will definitely remember you.