> > This is why it's odd when I find links to the feature calling it "2 guys sitting on a couch holding came controllers".
>
> No matter what you call this bit of furniture, I am amazed that people who like the comic enough to link to it don't bother to make sure that their link actually states the correct title.

People don't remember things exactly. People usually remember ideas that correspond to the names they're trying to remember. I think our brain finds it easier to store the familiar image of a sofa, but then when we recall the name we see the image and call it a "couch". Of course, since people's memory includes a pretty clear image of a couch, they don't bother to check if they've gotten the name right. After all, it *was* couch-something, wasn't it?

I read about a study where they asked people to remember and recreate positions of pieces on a chess board. People without much chess experience tried to remember the positions of individual pieces, and they generally got most of the positions right. Highly experienced chess players tended to remember the overall positions of the two players, rather than the positions of the individual pieces, and they generally recreated completely different positions in which both sides had roughly the same strength as the positions they were initially shown. Just goes to show that it's not as easy as it seems to remember something that should be familiar to you.

^v^:)^v^
FB