Pattern Recognition Versus Recall

Human memory is incredibly bad. In fact, it is so bad that you probably don’t remember what you ate for breakfast just a few days ago. The interesting thing is that human brainpower is pretty impressive; we are outstanding at pattern matching and problem solving. Memory has everything to do with search.
You often search because you have poor memory. But, it isn’t so poor that you are a blank slate, tabula rasa. No, instead, you have a clue and you are buying more clues with every search you do. Let’s cut to the core of this.
Your ability to pattern match and recognize is outstanding, but your ability to dredge up old memories is awful. This is recognition versus recall at work.
Put into a simple example, you are great with faces but you just can’t remember names. Which face? Any face! By the way, you aren’t special or unique. You are like every other human on the planet. You are better with faces than names.
Why?
Show Me and Don’t Make Me Think!
The answer is simple. When you see a face you match it against what you know. You are matching patterns. You are capitalizing on your ability to recognize faces. But, you can’t remember names because you have poor recall. You can’t dredge up the name that goes with that face. Recognition in this case is a face-to-face matching exercise. Folks, that is pretty easy.