Abstract
A memory of an identical noun becomes paradoxically lower when memorized as a person name, as opposed to when memorized as a name of a profession. The Baker-baker paradox is often regarded as an example of the difficulty in learning a person’s name. The purpose of this study was to consider whether the paradox appears in Japanese nouns that have different culture background and the diversity as to the person names. In the experiment, 40 participants took part in four tasks including incidental or intentional recall tasks. They were required to learn persons’ face with profiles (first names and surnames or person’s semantic properties such as mottos and favorite things or places). Then they had to recall persons’ profiles using faces as cues. The result suggested the failure of the paradox. Namely, the performances of memory of nouns didn’t show notable differences between the memories as person names and as semantic properties.
