Comments on: Do I Know You?

Do I Know You?

jacquilynne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:53:34 -0800

Test your facial, verbal and object memory.

By: phrontist

phrontist — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:56:22 -0800

That is a really cool logo.

By: djgh

djgh — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:14:16 -0800

It's a good thing that I'm not friends with any eyeglasses, otherwise they'd be hell to pay. That was neat, thanks!

By: jsavimbi

jsavimbi — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:17:45 -0800

Boring.

By: creasy boy

creasy boy — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:18:26 -0800

This confirmed what I knew, I cannot recognize people's faces for shit. I was in the 12th percentile for faces, 50 for objects and 84 for names. It is an affliction. Sometimes I see customers of mine in the street and they say hi to me and I have no idea who they are. It's very off-putting.

By: CrazyLemonade

CrazyLemonade — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:20:54 -0800

From the form before the test Please fill out the form below: Location: Please Select One United States/Canada United Kingdom Australia Europe, excluding UK Africa Asia South/Central America Other WTF??? What about GEOGRAPHICAL MEMORY? Did no one pay attention when they mentioned Mexico as part of North America? Or at least when they said it *was not* Central America, and *not* South America. Idiots. I kind of don't want to take the test anymore, so as not to have to choose "Other". ....grrrr

By: creasy boy

creasy boy — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:21:56 -0800

Also it occurs to me that this test is culturally biased, for example the names were all Anglo-Saxon. I imagine I would flunk any test for Chinese names. And I think it's probably the same deal with faces -- if you grew up in China, probably all white people would look the same to you.

By: djgh

djgh — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:25:46 -0800

creasy boy - They mention this at the end of the test, especially with regard to the face recognition. So I guess they're aware of its flaws.

By: FlamingBore

FlamingBore — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:27:22 -0800

I always knew I had a thing for girls with glasses, but this confirmed it. 100% on the eyeglass part 90% on facial recognition and 83% on verbal

By: rhymer

rhymer — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:27:52 -0800

Presumably your facial memory depends on how many facials you've experienced.

By: isopraxis

isopraxis — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:31:24 -0800

The names mostly had color or other contextual clues to assist with encoding if you picked up on that. Trying to memorize randomly generated clumps of letters, or names which have little context, provide poor metrics for what they are attempting to measure. It has to be culturally connected in some fashion. [NOT CHINESE-NAMIST]

By: wsg

wsg — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:32:26 -0800

98% facial recognition 88% object recognition 67% verbal recognition interesting.

By: zennie

zennie — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:36:45 -0800

I normally can't recognize faces well, so I am shocked that I am in the 91st percentile for faces; the 88th and 84th percentiles for objects and names, resp., seem more reasonable. Perhaps it was cheating to assign an identity to each face in the first step (Pansy Parkinson! Helen of Troy! Lobelia Sackville-Baggins!). I pulled a similar trick with the glasses (Ted Raimi's! Alan Rickman's!) but I'm not sure how much that helped.

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:43:46 -0800

92% face, 75% verbal, 82% object, which totally explains why I always refer to folks as "Whatshisname Fatface with those blue or brown shoes".

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:45:40 -0800

I was 40th percentile on faces, which fits with my belief that I suck at recognizing people. I did much better on glasses (84th), but I'd be interested to know how those results change depending on whether the person doing the test wears glasses themselves.

By: splice

splice — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:48:04 -0800

Seems my memory exercises are paying off.. 100% verbal recognition 98% object recognition 94% facial recognition Oh, and I wear glasses. And I also suck at recognizing people, or at least associating names with faces. Hence my memory exercises.

By: splice

splice — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:49:17 -0800

And technically that 98% should have been 100% as I just pressed the button too fast and actually had recognized the glasses...

By: darksasami

darksasami — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:53:05 -0800

20th percentile for faces. I actually recognize people by their hair. If their hairstyle changes, I stop recognizing them. One time I got lost from my mother while standing right next to her, because she got a perm. In this test, the people I got right were ones I recognized from the shape of the cut edge of the forehead.

By: kittyprecious

kittyprecious — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:53:40 -0800

2% object recognition: I'm special! ...or maybe I don't wear glasses and am generally fashion-challenged.

By: kittyprecious

kittyprecious — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:55:35 -0800

And now that I think about it, I never remember what kind of car any of my friends drive...

By: tiny crocodile

tiny crocodile — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:56:01 -0800

88th percentile in face recognition 75th percentile in object recognition 10th percentile in verbal recognition I knew I was bad with names...but apparently i'm very bad indeed.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:57:59 -0800

84th percentile on the verbal, 45th on objects and 28th on faces. That's not actually very surprising-- I did what the test suggested and spoke the names aloud, and I know that I'm much better at memorizing through hearing than through sight. And I already knew that I stink at recognizing faces.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:58:31 -0800

94%, 92%, and 92%. Why can't I memorize telephone numbers?

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:03:46 -0800

2% object recognition: I'm special! 2% on the test? Or 2nd percentile? Because 2 percent on the test would be brutally bad. Way worse than even random chance.

By: kittyprecious

kittyprecious — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:08:07 -0800

68% correct, 2nd percentile.

By: craichead

craichead — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:11:40 -0800

Huh. I think I'm terrible at remembering faces, but I'm actually 48th percentile. Apparently, being terrible at remembering faces is totally typical!

By: DU

DU — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:17:23 -0800

Face: 92% (80th pctl) Object: 82% (35th pctl) Verbal: 92% (84th pctl) I'm going to explain the object one away as being very confusing. I'm going to see the targets twice in the run of 50? Wha? I know I clicked yes on a few that I didn't recognize as being from the targets but that I *did* recognize from earlier in the run of 50, so I said yes because I'd seen them twice. Very strange that average object recognition is slightly higher than average face recognition.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:18:56 -0800

Also, I think I must have a special impairment: I didn't realize until I read the scoring information that all of the faces were of women!

By: daHIFI

daHIFI — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:22:10 -0800

those are some of the whitest names I've ever heard.

By: mygothlaundry

mygothlaundry — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:30:09 -0800

64% faces, which is better than I thought I'd do: I didn't realize they were all women either! I just kept wondering why they all had such horrible skin. 94% objects - when you've had glasses yourself since age 6, it's not hard to spot the differences - and 75% names, terrible, I can't believe I did that poorly. Maybe it's just British male names I have trouble with.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:32:46 -0800

Wow, I really am bad with faces. I also didn't realize they were all women. Faces: 62%/1st (!) percentile Objects: 92%/75th percentile Verbal: 83%/65th percentile. I was a little distracted during the test, though. Especially the faces - I kept worrying they wouldn't like me. Jesus.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:34:10 -0800

Face Recognition Memory: 84%, 48th percentile Object Recognition Memory: 94%, 82nd percentile Verbal Recognition Memory: 83%, 65th percentile All the results come as a surprise to me. As I took the test I felt sure I was doing extremely poorly. I always felt like I was making wild guesses, with only a few exceptions. When I tried to memorize, I had to resist the urge to quit or just not care. On the initial survey question, I said that I was "much worse than average" in recognizing faces. So, the 48th percentile, though not good, is still well above what I expected. And I never, ever remember names. And I just couldn't care less about eyeglasses though I freakily scored in the 82nd percentile on that test. I guess this just shows what already knew but had sort of forgotten before I took the test. I actually have a very good memory (for all kinds of other stuff, I have a much better memory than almost anyone else I know). The only reason I don't remember faces, or hairstyles, or the color of my wife's or SO's eyes, or names of people I meet, is that I don't care. I can't be bothered to remember these things, which is pretty self-centered, actually. For some reason I care about where people are from/have lived/were born and I always remember that information, even when I've learned it obliquely. I can tell you where a lot of mefites live off the top of my head. I remember off-the-cuff biographical details of people, details of stories they've told, all sorts of things that most people expect to be forgotten. And yet I'm not exaggerating when I say that I can't remember the eye color of my SO. I got in trouble with this with my wife, and then repeated the mistake with a following SO, even though I had learned that this is a big relationship faux pas. When I did learn that SO's eye color, it was by way of a mnemonic, not that her eye color itself had any meaning to me. I've always worried that I'd be witness to a crime and be asked by police to describe someone. I can't describe what people look like at all, I mostly can't picture people's faces in my mind's eye, even though I have excellent mental imagely skills. I don't remember what color people's hair color is. I can tell you if someone is unusually tall or short, skinny or fat, or has unusually short or long hair. Otherwise, nada.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:37:59 -0800

Also it explains why I always get confused during movies with more than one character of the same gender and ethnicity.

By: ubiquity

ubiquity — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:51:32 -0800

Regarding some people's surprise at their high scores in some areas: i am terrible with faces (once failed to recognize my ex-wife, for instance, after she'd had a new hairdo), but scored only slightly lower than average (48 %ile). To me this suggests that one might perform better on the test than "in the field" for a couple of reasons. For instance, I suspect I am bad at faces because I just don't pay attention to them, and the test forced me to pay attention. On the other hand, one thing i AM good at is taking tests. So in general I'd expect my results on this test to be better than actual experience. If this applied equally to everyone, the results might still be normative, but of course it doesn't.

By: mckenney

mckenney — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:59:56 -0800

Face: 98% Object: 100% Verbal: 100% Clearly, I am some kind of freak of nature. But I was also trying actively to remember what I was reading, which might maybe affect it in an unrealistic way. I probably should have just blown through them. Because I really am not so good with faces.

By: majick

majick — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:29:12 -0800

You people astonish me. I was in the 4th and 5th percentile in facial and object recognition, respectively, and I put in a serious effort. That verbal recognition test? I nailed that thing, placing me solidly in the 48th percentile. I also was surprised that the faces shown were allegedly only those of women. Some of the stand-out faces for me were those I recognized as "grizzled lantern jaw guy," "frightened Marty Feldman," and "baby Yul Brenner." Some of those facial types were radically outside my experiences.

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:33:19 -0800

I was thinking about the faces when I took the test, "Man, you sure can tell this is UK-centric."

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:54:02 -0800

Jesus. 4th percentile on faces, 70th- or 80th-something on objects, 93rd (100%) for names. Apparently, I really and truly suck at recognizing faces. Majick: Yeah, I thought half those faces were male too!

By: Tuwa

Tuwa — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:14:55 -0800

48th percentile on faces, 90th percentile on objects, 84th percentile on names. The facial recognition score is much better than I expected; when I first started watching movies it took me about a year before I could consistently tell Al Pacino from Dustin Hoffman.

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:15:43 -0800

Geeze. I just found my results again, and it turns out that I had misremembered a score -- I got 88% on object memory, giving me a percentile of 55 (not 70-80, like I thought). Dere's some irony dere.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:26:13 -0800

This is an interesting test. It tends to confirm my suspicion that we all navigate slightly different worlds, based on how our brain decides to work. I scored 40/55/100th percentile. Maybe the reason I like Metafilter is that I'm quite comfortable navigating in a sea of words.

By: ikkyu2

ikkyu2 — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:26:43 -0800

Er, 40 - faces, 55 - object, 100- verbal, if anyone cares.

By: kittyprecious

kittyprecious — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:30:24 -0800

Speaking of Dustin Hoffman, I have a theory that people start to look alike as they get older. For example.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:38:38 -0800

Face Recognition Memory: 80%, 28th percentile Object Recognition Memory: 88%, 55th percentile Verbal Recognition Memory: 67%, 25th percentile This doesn't seem promising...

By: Feisty

Feisty — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:41:50 -0800

I wonder why the faces were black & white.

By: andywolf

andywolf — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 12:51:24 -0800

90% face 88% object 58% name with my inner voice saying "fuck it, don't go to work" i think i did pretty good on the name one.

By: hanoixan

hanoixan — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:00:14 -0800

I have a feeling that those faces are compositions of pieces of participants' faces, and that they mix and match tops and bottoms to throw you off. Making them black and white would make this far easier to do. I could be wrong. I did far better in object recognition, and am not very proud of my 48% percentile verbal score.

By: hindmost

hindmost — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:41:52 -0800

92% / 94% / 92% I expected to do a lot worse. Clearly I need to put in as much effort in real life as I do for online tests.

By: cobaltnine

cobaltnine — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:04:22 -0800

I rocked names - which makes some sense, except that pairing names to faces was not tested, which makes it easier for me. Could I tell you what John Adjectivenoun. looked like? Probably not. But I can tell you I know the name John Adjectivenoun. (Or Bill Nounverb. Those were damn easy last names.) As for the glasses, which I also rocked? Bunnies. Oh, that's scientist bunny's pair. That's artist-bunny's pair. And so on. Faces...hell, isn't it known that people really recognise people via hairstyle and so on more than actual faces? Right? Stupid floating heads. I kept thinking of them as nuns, or guys in nun-drag. And since all of them look alike, I was screwed on that test.

By: Azaadistani

Azaadistani — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:44:07 -0800

Face Recognition Memory: 94%, 84th percentile Object Recognition Memory: 98%, 90th percentile Verbal Recognition Memory: 100%, 93rd percentile

By: subaruwrx

subaruwrx — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:08:09 -0800

77% facial 88% object 92% verbal I had two typos on the Verbal, so that should have been closer to 98% apparntly, I too fail at recognizing faces. I dont even try, for the most part. I think I focus on the fatness of the face and the nose, so if people have similar fat and noses, Ill confuse them.

By: revfitz

revfitz — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:00:39 -0800

Holy crap I just got 1st percentile on the face thing. I knew I wasn't particularly good at recognizing people but jeez.

By: Lucinda

Lucinda — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:04:56 -0800

Face, 92% Object, 86% Verbal, 83% This doesn't change the fact that I have been at my job for eight months and there are two attorneys here that I cannot tell apart. I know that one is named Ray and one is named Stu, but I don't know which is which.

By: birdie birdington

birdie birdington — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:59:47 -0800

96% 92% 92% My boyfriend constantly insists my ability to remember faces and evaluate likenesses between faces is uncanny. (I think my voice recognition is particularly stellar though. Have you ever noticed how similar Noam Chomsky and Owen Wilson sound? Have you, have you?) I also was surprised that the faces shown were allegedly only those of women. Some of the stand-out faces for me were those I recognized as "grizzled lantern jaw guy," "frightened Marty Feldman," and "baby Yul Brenner." Some of those facial types were radically outside my experiences. Me too. I remembered a lot of them for being "the guy with the jowels" and "sort of butchy, maybe a dyke? I don't know, maybe a guy...wait, this isn't helping you remember, notice a determining characteristic quick!"

By: primer_dimer

primer_dimer — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 04:37:51 -0800

face: 2 %ile object: 50%ile verbal: 65 %ile Pretty much as soon as the face one started I felt like I was pressing yes/no essentially at random... this ties in with my RL experience.

By: Myeral

Myeral — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 06:51:02 -0800

84% 80% 75% Ethereal Bligh: I was thinking about the faces when I took the test, "Man, you sure can tell this is UK-centric." How? The teeth aren't showing in any of them.

By: desjardins

desjardins — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:06:35 -0800

88% face, 76% object (14th percentile), 92% verbal. This doesn't really surprise me. I've always had a blind spot about objects. If I had to describe a car involved in an accident it would go something like "It was a four door, or maybe a two door, sedan, or a station wagon, or one of those smallish SUV things, gray, or blue. Well, I know it had four tires!" I can't even tell you the color of our carpets without looking.