In a recent study performed at Duke University, and published in April in the journal, Memory & Cognition, researchers discovered that your mom calls you the wrong name because you look like your brother or your sister and her brain gets confused. Not only does it happen to your mom, but it happens to everyone and it happens quite more often than anyone might suppose.
The names that are spurted out, the study finds, are not just randomly called out. They have identifiable patterns to them. The research suggests that the incorrect names that are chosen are usually chosen from the people within the same social group as the person who is blurting out the incorrect name. Or, a name is spoken out that sounds like your name. Physical appearance, the researchers mention, doesn’t matter in the least because the brain isn’t really focused on what the person looks like.
The researchers at Duke surveyed 1,700 people for the study. They were selected because they had been called the wrong name many times in the past or they had misnamed someone frequently. In the experiments, the subjects were well known to one another. When an incorrect name was shouted out, it was the name of a person who was known to the same social group as the participants for almost all of the time. Your mother may actually call you by all of your sibling’s names. Even if you are a boy, she will actually even call you by your sister’s name before her brain finally settles on your actual name. Even if you are called by the name of your dog or cat, it’s because mom considers them part of the family.
While there were more than several instances where the person was referred to by their pet’s name, dogs were called out more than cats. The researchers concluded that dogs are more likely to be included in family and known social groups than are cats. One of the reasons, they suggest, is that dogs are more likely to actually respond when their name is spoken whereas cats tend to be much more independent and apathetic with regard to such things.
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