Why do grandparents often confuse the names of their children and grandchildren? There is an explanation ... and it's beautiful
If you have grown up in a large family, or even if you have at least one sibling, surely you have lived that moment when a parent or grandparent has confused your name with that of another family member --- In other words, they call you by your sibling's name.
Perhaps, at first, an oversight like that can cause a bit of bad feeling, because the most logical thinking that jumps to mind is that this grandfather or parent does not even love us enough to remember our name!
Yet - says science - things are not like that at all.
via National Institutes of Health
An interesting study published in the journal "Memory and Cognition" took into consideration more than 1,700 people of all ages, asking them if and when it had happened that they had mixed up a name or had been confused with another family member. If the answer was positive, then what was investigated was what kind of correlation there was between the two names that had been switched.
The result was that, in general, the names switched are between individuals belonging to the same social group or to the same family category. In other words, those who mistake a name do so because they consider those two individuals to be on the same level and of the same importance.
When a teacher confuses one pupil's name with another, he or she does not do it due to a physical resemblance or lack of attention, but because teacher's brain has put all the names in the "pupils" category and the teacher treats them all the same way.
So, to get back to the family member dynamics, the conclusion is quickly explained. Grandma does not switch the names because she is distracted or because she treats her nephews superficially, far from it! Actually, she confuses them because for her all her grandchildren are the same, and occupy the same place in her brain ... and therefore also in her heart.
