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Physiology & Medicine / Do we group names in our memory by gender?
« on: 11/03/2010 18:34:32 »
There's a common phenomenon where people rattle through a list of names before finally hitting on the person they are actually speaking to or about. For example, I quite often start with my younger sister's name, my elder daughter's name, before finally getting to my younger daughter. We often joke that my younger daughter's name is actually Hol-Cla-Evelyn, not Evelyn at all. Similarily, I often rattle through my boss, my father, and my brother before finally getting to my husband's name. And lots of people do this. What's interesting is that I've never heard anyone confuse genders, even when they include their pets in the list. Does that mean that we actually file people's names by gender in our memory? Has anyone done any research on this?