Conversion and Reyes

[Bunny M]

I, personally, have a non-functional name memory.  I can generally remember people, just not what they're called.  Not that useful. 

I hear you, brother! Embarrassing as hell, too.

Weirdly enough, I tend to have a good memory for names and a (not quite as) good memory for faces. The link between the two? Not so much. I also get the constant music stream in my head, which can be bad when it's a song I dislike/loathe, and doubly so if it's a loathed song that I only remember a chunk of. 

Fortunately I've developed ways of dealing with this. 

[jennygadget]

My kinesthetic memory is excellent in spots -- I remember driving routes kinesthetically-plus-visually (images of landmarks, which can be anything, trigger a memory of which way to turn, or how far the next thing feels like), for example, which makes me crap at giving directions by street name; and I often cue lost words with associated hand gestures -- but only in spots, and mostly in combination with visual or verbal memory.  My auditory memory is dreadful -- names are especially bad.

I've gotten really bad at not asking for directions even when I should because people look at me funny when I write down the even the shortest routes or insist* on finding a map to look at for anything more complex that just a few "turn left here" and turn right there"s.

I usually need to drive the route at least twice before I can do it without messing up - or at least having to think about where I'm going the whole time, but after that I'm good, even if it's been a while.  I start to worry if it has been a while, but it's almost always for no reason.  (unless they change the landmarks! as I found out a few times over reunion weekend.)

At the same time, when people ask me for directions I am unhelpfully vague on names - even for places I've been familiar with for decades.

*I wish I could say politely, but the looks I'm getting by that time kinda drive me a little crazy.

[DavidG]

How does that work for you? When I see a page, I see page layout, and not the text (or at least not the small text). But I remember where passages are, and (generally, more or less) what they say. So I can find things, but it's not like I can read the page.

That sounds pretty much like my situation. When I was looking at the thread earlier in the week I was thinking about the last exam I did, which was almost exactly a year ago -- the Royal Yacht Association's Day Skipper Theory course in a week's crammed course.  That was odd because while we were doing the theory and working the examples during the day we were also on holiday and going out for meals every lunchtime and evening, so the only 'revision' that got done was about an hour late on the night before the exams, having stuffed myself on food and drink earlier in the evening. And yet a year on, barely having thought about it since, I can recall page layout for a bunch of the pages in the text book (not that it's a particularly long one). Not the labels that went on diagrams (though if I seriously sat down to try and reconstruct it I suspect I could do pretty well), certainly not the text, though the more I think the more detail I can recall about the structure.

With fiction I'll generally have very good recall of overall structure, with a fairly good recall of detailed structure and very detailed recall of some scenes. If I re-read a book, then it reinforces my recall of the scenes I haven't gotten to yet, suggesting that there's more information stored than I'm readily able to systematically recall, but that refreshes when it gets the appropriate cues.

[DavidG]

I thought of another visual eidetic on TV: CSI's Miniature Killer, though it's just possible that she was technically a savant.

[tylik]

Since we're doing the downside of memory bit...

Names are pretty hard for me. Getting easier (I'm sure my memory isn't actually getting better, but I have gotten better at using it, and a lot of my problems seem to come down to trying to hard), but it's still not easy. I notice this a lot with books - not that I generally have trouble with book titles, but I usually think of things in terms of title first, and then (maybe) author (I'm thinking scholarly texts here, mostly - and while texts I've read or worked all the way through have a sense of personality, things I mostly have used for reference don't, generally). My roommate (and while we haven't combined our libraries - that's, like, serious commitment or something - we co-ordinate our libraries) generally refers to books by authors' last names. His strategy makes sense when you have three books that all have titles something very close to "Stochastic Modeling". Mine makes more sense when you have multiple books by the same author. Both these apply. He's constantly saying "Well, in Dummit and Foote..." "Um, which one is that?" Ask I. (Abstract Algebra, BTW.)

I've read that the problem most people have with names is they aren't as well embedded in associative matrices. Which is probably why I'm getting better at names - when I learn someone's name, I try to either make, or at least nurture associative connections. Of course, this is not helped by some of my own idiosyncrasies - for instance, for historical reasons, the names "Jeff" and "Eric" are strongly associated in my head in some kind of wretched gematria, and I have to be careful not to switch them around. Now, last year our lab (which isn't very big) had three Jeffs and two Erics.

Remembering where things are? I did mention the sequence thing, right? I can remember holding my cell phone sixty times in a few seconds. It expands rapidly. Which is the most recent one? Um... I mean, I can backtrack more often than not, but I mostly try to just put things in very predictable places. (Especially since my cellphone is also my bedside clock, and I almost always have the ringer turned off.)

Doing foolish absentminded stuff? Well, I've only put the broccoli in the freezer once recently, but yeah, check. An awful lot of things in my head run as semi-autonomous processes. (As a side note, Hawkin's book On Intelligence is worth the read. It proposes a theory of cortical function - which may not sound like a big deal, but honest, neuroscientists have a lot of data about the cortex, but for the most part don't know crap about what it does - which is all about ascending hierarchies of pattern matching. Seems pretty descriptive of my brain anyway. I still generally turn the knob on most of the doors in the lab, even though they are always locked, because the first thing you do with a door you want to go through is turn the knob, and "door is locked, find a key" is a higher level process. I swear, I am written in LISP.) This is probably a really good thing - while I tend to think of myself as being aware of my surroundings, memory and heck, just a lot of thinking is pretty immersive, and it's a good thing something in my head handles administrative tasks like where and when to walk and "hey, that person is talking to you so here are their last three sentences in the buffer..."

Remembering to do things? Not so much! I do pretty well having a tightly scheduled life, though I did learn that when I get over a certain level of busy I should actually put the schedule in my computer and/or PDA and have it remind me when I need to do things - less stress, and I don't run into time problems that way. And I've gotten better about leaving myself post-it notes in my head - next time you're about to do this move in this form, pay extra attention to the weight shift. Next time you're at the co-op, remember to pick up fenugreek. Remembering to put a book in my bag so I can return it to a friend? Remembering to call my sister? Um. I try. Really.

[DavidG]

I've read that the problem most people have with names is they aren't as well embedded in associative matrices.

Which may be why nicknames are so common, because usually the nickname has a built-in association. The only nickname I've had that's really stuck is 'pod, shortened from tripod, because I'm the guy on crutches....
 

last year our lab (which isn't very big) had three Jeffs and two Erics.

We managed to have Julie, Julia, and Julian sitting at three out of a block of four desks. 'Hey, Jules' wasn't really useful

Which is the most recent one? Um...

My memory for when something happened is pretty lousy. Stuff can feel like it was years ago and be barely months old, or like it was like last week and be years old.

Doing foolish absentminded stuff? Well, I've only put the broccoli in the freezer once recently, but yeah, check.

It happens more when I'm tired, such as trying to swipe my front door open with my security pass. Forgetting I've got a pizza or garlic bread or whatever in the oven tends to happen weekly. Like the memory sequencing, some of that may be dyspraxia related.

Remembering to call my sister? Um. I try. Really.

That reminds me! (Of two things, unfortunately, 1) phone sister, 2) post her wedding anniversary card which has been sitting there for a week and may well now be late....).