lorimt

You know how I always say I'm bad at face recognition? Here's evidence!

I took this test of face, name and object recognition, run, I believe, by the University College London and Harvard.

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Face Recognition Memory

In the face recognition test, you were asked to learn the faces of 10
women. When you were tested on these faces, you had to indicate
whether a face on the screen was one you learned or one that you
hadn't seen before.

Out of 20 familiar faces, you correctly responded that you had seen 12
faces before.

Out of 30 unfamiliar faces, you correctly responded that you had NOT
seen 24 faces before.

Overall, you got 72% correct! The average score on this test is 85%
correct. Your percentile rank on this test was 9.

Object Recognition Memory

In the object recognition test, you were asked to memorize 10 images
of eyeglasses. When you were tested on these eyeglasses, you had to
indicate whether a pair of eyeglasses on the screen was one you
learned or one that you hadn't seen before.

Out of 20 familiar eyeglasses, you correctly responded that you had
seen 19 eyeglasses before.

Out of 30 unfamiliar eyeglasses, you correctly responded that you had
NOT seen 26 eyeglasses before.

Overall, you got 90% correct! The average score on this test is 86%
correct. Your percentile rank on this test was 65.

Verbal Recognition Memory

In the verbal recognition test, you were asked to learn the names of
12 men. When you were tested on these names, you had to indicate which
of four names was one of the names that you had learned.

Out of 12 sets of names, you correctly chose the familiar name8 times.

Overall, you got 67% correct! The average score on this test is 77%
correct. Your percentile rank on this test was 25.

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I felt a sense of panic throughout the face recognition test, both in trying to learn the faces, and later when trying to recall them. I had this overwhelming feeling I'd never seen any of them before, and that aside from a few distinctive eyebrows and outlines I was blindly guessing. In contrast, the eyeglasses felt like a piece of cake, with distinctive shapes all over the place. The names were also sort of odd, in that I did better than I initially expected, but worse than I thought I was doing mid-test. That, and their suggestion to read the names aloud helped immensely.

The point is, maybe it isn't actually names I'm bad at (or at least, only names) but faces. Definitely an interesting test.