Why can't you suddenly remember the name of an acquaintance?

"What did I want to say to your mother?" "Wait, let me think." "It's on my lips." She said. "Wait a minute, I know." "You know what I mean." "Do you have a bad rest or indigestion?" "It's on my lips." "Wait a minute, wait a minute, I know." 1. This is a dialogue between Nick Sha and his wife Marianne in Dan Delillo's novel Gangdom. This is a typical example of being stuck with familiar things and unable to remember them. This often happens in daily life, which always makes people feel helpless. Just like the dialogue between Nick and Marianne, sometimes it's okay to get stuck. But on some occasions, it will cause great anxiety. For example, at the company banquet, you and your colleague Martin are chatting while drinking. At this moment, a lady who has worked with you for a long time wants to join your conversation. You haven't seen her for months. You really want to introduce her to Martin, and usually, you are happy to do so. Although you are well aware of her position, her time in the company and even her favorite food, you just can't remember her name, which almost makes you dizzy. You may remember that her name begins with C or K, and you know that it contains many other syllables. The name is on your lips, but no matter how hard you think about it, you just can't remember it. In order to avoid silence and embarrassment, you can only change the subject quickly. "Do you know each other?" You asked as if nothing had happened. When Katrina shook hands with Martin and introduced herself, you felt relieved, but at the same time you were depressed. This kind of memory defect is different from distraction or forgetfulness. Different from distraction, because occasionally stuck names or words have been encoded by memory information and stored in the brain, as long as there are suitable clues, they can be recalled; It's not like forgetfulness. If you forget it, you forget it. It just stayed there, as if it were about to come to mind, but it's no use worrying about it, because you can't remember it. Sometimes, it's an obvious fact, but you just can't argue with others. 3. "Blank" will happen in many cases. In daily conversation, you may forget a word in a sentence; Actors are most afraid of forgetting their lines on the stage. Although it is rare, the embarrassment can be imagined. What students are most afraid of is that things that have been reviewed many times are stuck in the examination room, and they suddenly realize after the exam. The survey found that the most common gap in daily life is forgetting the names of acquaintances. This situation happens more to the elderly, which has become their biggest concern. Older people over 5 years old often complain about the same memory problems, one of which is that they can't remember the names of acquaintances. 4. Objective data also support these views. Let people aged 2, 4 and 7 keep a diary for one month respectively, and record the things they encounter that are "on their lips" but can't be remembered. It turns out that "blank" usually occurs in the names of articles (such as seaweed) and abstract words (such as dialects). In the three groups of tests, the most common occurrence of "blank" is that people can't remember their names, which is more difficult to remember than the names of countries or cities. Forgetting names most often happens in the 4-7 age group, not in the 2-year-old group. In contrast, forgetting the names of acquaintances most often happens in the 7-year-old group. 5. Why do we always forget other people's names? Before answering this question, let's take a look at what psychologists call Baker／baker. The experiment was divided into two groups, and the unfamiliar male head photos were shown to the subjects. The difference is that the first group of subjects are shown photos and names, while the second group is shown photos and occupations. The name and occupation of men in photos marked with the same words in the experiment. For example, when members of the name group get the information, the first person's name is Baker, and the second person's name is Potter. The information obtained by the members of the professional group is that the first person's occupation is a baker and the second person is a ceramic worker. Finally, only the relevant photos were shown, and the members of the two groups were asked to recall the relevant information respectively. It was found that the probability of recalling the occupation was higher than that of recalling the name. This conclusion is called Baker theory. Why do the same words produce different results when they represent names and occupations? 6. One hundred and fifty years ago, john stuart Mayer explained Baker's theory in a modern way through a lot of observation. "Most people's names don't have any special meaning." Mel explained, "Names only indicate what we call different people, but fail to indicate or imply any other characteristics that belong to these people." That is to say, when I told you that my friend's name was john Baker, you knew nothing except that he had a fairly common Anglo-Saxon name. But if I tell you that my friend is a baker, I may tell you many things: where he works, how is his life, what special materials he uses to bake bread, what his unique skills are, and so on. The occupation of "baker" will make people add rich associations and knowledge on the basis of understanding the opposite contractor. The word "baker" fully represents its own meaning. In this experiment, we can more easily remember the occupation of "Baker" with pre-existing associations and knowledge, but it is far from easy to remember the name "baker". 7. Some names have less meanings, which is why it is more difficult for us to remember and master new names. From this, we can know why people forget similar names more easily. Because compared with common names, some names have almost no corresponding definitions, knowledge and connections. Let's take a look at a small experiment reported by cognitive psychologists Salg Blidat and Tim Valentine. They show people some pictures of cartoon and comedy characters, some with descriptive names that highlight their personality characteristics (bad temper, white as snow, miser, etc.), others with arbitrary names. The results show that even though participants are familiar with both types of names, their forgetting rate of descriptive names is lower than that of arbitrary names. 8. In modern western culture, the names of ordinary people usually have nothing to do with their characteristics, but some places are different. For example, the naming of Indian tribes in Yuman, Arizona, especially represents the time and place of their birth. In some Greek villages, the surnames of rich farmers indicate his important religious beliefs, while the surnames of middle-class members are given by men's first names, while the names of poor shepherds are just absurd nicknames. These names, which can reflect the special cultural background of individuals, are less "blank" than in modern western society. 9. The memory theory model of common names and proper names can help us to understand more deeply that the lack of conceptual knowledge of names is the reason for the phenomenon of "blank". The kind and amount of knowledge needed to produce common names and proper names are obviously different. First, let's consider the following three basic factors. The first element is visual description, a vivid description of an object or someone, such as a square book, a sharp knife or a bulging nose and your companion Martin's sparse black hair. The visual description of the "baker" includes the images, appearances and characteristics of the different bakers you meet. The visual description of "john baker" may include his face shape and other features such as rimmed glasses, thick gray beard and so on.