Photographic memory - eidetic hoax

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

In this week’s online column Cecil mentions the case case of “Elizabeth”, the woman with the super-eidetic memory. This is often cited, and I believe it was published in a respectable scientific journal, and not just in Psychology Today. However, when I was in a graduate seminar on the psychology of memory (about 16 years ago, at a major university) I was told by the professor, an expert in the field, that the “discovery” was in fact a hoax. As he told the story, “Elizabeth” was actually the girlfriend of the researcher, who had been talking to her about his interest in eidetic imagery. He had a reputation, however, for being rather gullible, and, for a joke, she, and a group of his other friends, cooked up a fake demonstration of her amazing eidetic powers. He was completely taken in, and became very excited at his amazing “discovery”. But before “Elizabeth” and her friends had the time (or maybe the heart) to let the victim in on the joke, things had got out of hand, and the discovery was already well known, and, before long, published.

The etiquette of scientific publication would make it difficult to get a story like this into the formal record, and, anyway, psychologists probably do not want it too widely known how easily they can be taken in. (Perhaps, also, people were reluctant to ruin the career of the poor, duped but not dishonest, researcher.) I do remember reading, however, a report of a research project that, despite an extensive search, failed to find anyone with eidetic abilities even remotely approaching those ascribed to “Elizabeth”. This would seem to lend credibility to the story that her abilities were a hoax.

I got the impression from my professor that the hoax story was quite well known amongst memory researchers. Furthermore, my impression is that psychological opinion over whether eidetic imagery (as distinct from the ordinary, relatively unreliable, memory imagery, that nearly everyone experiences) really exists, is still much more divided than Cecil seems to believe. It may be the majority opinion that it is real, but a respectable minority of researchers have their doubts. The amazing abilities of “Elizabeth” do still occasionally get mentioned in the reputable psychological literature, however. Some serious scientists do seem to believe it. I myself am no longer sufficiently close to the “in group” of memory psychologists to have heard the hoax story again, or to check out how widely it is known or believed. I wonder if anyone can confirm the hoax story or something like it, or, alternatively, can definitively confirm that “Elizabeth’s” abilities were real. Perhaps, best of all, Cecil could ferret out the real facts on this for us all!

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Is there such a thing as “photographic memory”? (01-Sep-2000)

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3

It’s quite possible to believe that this eidetic memory thing is a hoax. As we all know, simply cheating on these experiments can produce wonderous results, such as was claimed.

However, I wonder if there is a cite for the claim that it is a hoax.

at any rate, I hope Cecil or someone else who may happen to know can clear this up. If Cecil can do it, it’d be a major accomplishment, since this is something that even researchers in the field are unsure about.

4

I can give you a citation for the failure to find any other eidetic imagers remotely like “Elizabeth”. It is: Merritt J.O. (1979) “None in a Million: results of mass screening for eidetic ability,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2) 612. There is a lot more on eidetic imagery, and the elusive (and possibly illusory) nature of the phenomenon, in the same issue of the journal (which is one of the most respected journals in psychology and cognitive science).

As for the hoax story, I doubt if it is in print anywhere, for the reasons mentioned in the previous posting.

Nigel J.T. Thomas Ph.D.

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5

While it is not “photographic”, or Eidetic, in “The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, Sachs describes a simple man who loved music. His dad, a musician, read his son a several thousand page music encyclopedia. The son had the whole thing memorized and could recite any page from memory and tell you which page he was reciting.

This level of detail seems pretty close to Eidetic.

6

Several famous mathematicians have reportedly had photographic or eidetic memories, including Von Neumann, and Gauss. There is an interesting article on the subject at
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Mental_arithmetic.html

7

Although the memory abilities cited in the last two posts may be remarkable, I do not think that they are EIDETIC in the relevant sense. They are about remembering text or numbers. “Elizabeth’s” alleged feat involved remembering pictures, actually two pictures, each an apparently random scatter of thousands of black dots, remembering the exact positions of all (or nearly all) of the dots, and then mentally putting the pictures together to at last create a meaningful shape from the combination.

Memory even for several thousand pages of text, though impressive, is just not in this league. It is well known to psychologists that memorizing meaningful, connected prose is much easier than memorizing random stuff (for fairly obvious reasons: the bit that you just recalled gives youa pretty good clue as to what sort of thing is likely to come next). If someone could perfectly memorize many pages of random strings of letters, and tell you reliably on which pages, and whereabouts on the page, each occurrence of “jbqmeox” was, then it would be something on the same order as “Elizabeth’s” alleged feat.

In the case of the calculating prodigies, it is not even all that many numbers - maybe a dozen or so digits - that have to be remembered at a time for the calculations to be done. Sure, that is pretty impressive in the sense that most of us could not do it, but it is nothing like what we are asked to believe about “Elizabeth”. (Actually I suspect that most people probably could learn to do some amazing feats of mental calculation, but it would take an awful lot of hard practice, and most people have much much better things to do with their time. It is only for the math obsessed, and people with absolutely no life. Even before the days of computers, multiplying 5 digit numbers in your head, and such, was a pretty useless skill.)

Nigel Thomas

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8

I disagree with the OP on philosophical grounds. Science is not about careers or people. Science is about finding facts. If the scientist was, in fact, ‘duped’, he’d want to know that so he could disabuse himself of false notions. The rest of the world would as well, for the same reasons. Plenty of scientists have been proven wrong. Michaelson and Morely were a rather famous pair of scientists who did an experiment that proved themselves wrong. They were looking for the ‘luminiferous ether’, the medium light was supposed to travel in. They didn’t find it, but what they did find led the way for Einstein’s theories (the experiment proved that light’s speed was not relative to the observer’s speed). Every scientist wishes for a failure so important. Granted, the above scientist would not have such importance attached to his disproving, but who knows? In conclusion, I find it very hard to believe in the underlying claim of the OP that some group has conspired to prevent certain things from being published.

9

Of course, science SHOULD be about facts and THE TRUTH rather than about people, but as anyone who has made a serious study of the history or the sociology of science will tell you (or any experienced and honest scientist, come to that), it does not always succeed in living up to that ideal. Of course, my professor, by telling me (and the rest of the class) that story was trying to limit the harm caused to science as a whole by the hoax, as was I in making the post. Unfortunately, it would be very hard to get such a story, even if one had uncontrovertible evidence for it (and I don’t) published in regular scientific channels. It is not the sort of thing the journals would publish. I guess the integrity of science is just going to have to depend on Cecil and his message boards.

Nigel J.T. Thomas Ph.D.

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10

What, exactly, would make it so hard to get that published? Have you even tried? It would seem the journals would make it a cover story if it were sent to them, seeing as how it would challenge and possibly disprove a widely-held notion.

11

I guess you haven’t got much experience of trying to publish in (of reading?) academic journals, or you would not say such a thing. They are not like the National Enquirer, you know, not even like the New York Times. They are not interested in scandals. In any case, as I said, I do not know for a fact that the hoax story is true. I was hoping someone else might know, or, at least, might have heard something about it. Or, better still, that Cecil might get on the case.

Nigel J.T. Thomas Ph.D.

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12

I’ll have to disagree with NTThomas here. I’ve read more Psych journal articles in my day than I can remember. While politeness and reasoned debate is the norm, there certainly have been cases of long, drawn out debates that end in researchers hurling insults at each other. A letter exposing the hoax in a non-inflammatory way would not be all that bad in comparison.

Furthermore, many researchers and consequently Journal editors have complete disdain for “everyday memory” case studies such as “Elizabeth” and would not hesitate to debunk such a fact if the opportunity came along.

13

I suspect - mind you I’m not a publishing scientist or journal reader - but I suspect that in order to post a refutation of that previous study, one would either need a detailed review of the original study, including critique of the methodology and details about the events that nthomas does not possess (by his own admission), or else one would need to perform a new study to test the same application, and control for questioned factors more closely. (Of course that would require knowing the details of the original study in order to replicate it.)

Saying “my psych professor told me” won’t cut it for a journal article. As nthomas states.

Science journals also tend to have a predisposition to publish positive results only, unless the negative is a big upset of previous study findings.

And yes, at its high points science is about the truth and answers, but as with every human endeavor, politics and personalities come into play, and affect what is currently accepted at any stage. As well as predispositions and cultural baggage. That’s not to say that most scientists will refuse to change their minds when enough evidence is presented, but sometimes the definition of “enough” is a variable.

This is all not to say I think there is a concerted effort to keep the truth from coming to light.

14

I too heard the story (in grad school)about the woman who demonstrated eidetic imagery by combining the two random dot images. As told by the prof. of that course, the study was published and generated alot of excitement. However, the woman refused to demonstrate her ability in front of witnesses and later, the rumor was that she was romantically involved with the author of the paper. I don’t remember who the author was or where it was published. Although there are people with amazing visual memories, I don’t think that experimental pychologists who study memory give much credence to the notion that anyone possesses a truly photographic memory.

15

Absolutely. I’m just saying if the woman tested admitted the hoax or some other good proof came along, that probably would be sufficient evidence to publish something (not a journal article, probably just a letter). Or you could just slip in the debunking as part of a real journal article. At the very least someone could present the evidence at a conference…

16

Azorlosa has finally provided the response I was hoping for, namely an independent confirmation of the story that the “Elizabeth” result was fraudulent. The fact that the details Azorlosa’s version are slightly different from those of the version I recall only serves to strengthen the case, since it suggests that we got the story from different sources.

As for the likelihood of publication, on the whole I think Irishman has it right. Avumede’s second post makes a valid point, but for all I know, the story MAY have been published in some such form, somewhere. I just wish I knew where! (Anyone, please tell me if you know!)

BTW, for any who are interested, I think I have located the reference for the original paper on “Elizabeth”, although I have not had the opportunity to check it out:
Stromyer, C.F. & Psotka, J. “The Detailed Texture of Eidetic Images.” Nature (225) 346-349.
Also:
Stromyer, C.F. (1970) “Eidetikers.” Psychology Today (Nov. ) 76-80.

I had to go back to a pretty old source to find this. None of several recent textbooks and monographs on imagery that I looked at mentioned the case, which is in itself probably a sign that people in the field just do not believe in it. (Just quietly forgetting a result is probably a far more common and important mechanism for purging science of its errors than is the publication of formal disproofs or exposès. The trouble with this case is that “Elizabeth’s” amazing abilities have become a sort of urban legend outside the specialist fields of the psychology of imagery and memory. Some other psychologists still repeat it, and even someone as smart and skeptical as Cecil seems to have been taken in!)

Nigel J.T. Thomas Ph.D.

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17

Some people who are particularly synetsthetic may be able to respond in this way. For instance, it may be possible that synesthesia is a TWO-WAY-STREET. The one stimulant (like Elizabeth’s black dots) might trigger a particular stimula in the brain - and this may lead Elizabeth, or another such gifted individual, a “road back” to the dots.

18

Just 'cause this sounds intriguing, I started poking around to see what I could find. Looks like the author in question is Charles F Stromeyer. The bibliography here implies that his paper was reprinted (as An Adult Eidecker. which perhaps is a changed title?) in “Memory Observed”, edited by Ulrich Neisser. This book is available from Amazon, although it’s a newer addition. (One of the reviews implies that not all papers included in the first, 1982 edition are included in the second, 2000 edition. Hmmm.) In any case, Dr. Neisser would be an interesting person to contact about this subject, if one were so inclined.

In addition, there appears to be a Charles Stromeyer who is associated with Harvard Vision Sciences Laboratory. Better than even money that he’s the author of the original article. Anyone care to politely query him?

19

It might not be exactly what you want, but most strong chess players can play blindfold.
This means that they visualise a chessboard with the pieces in the initial position, then receive moves in the standard chess notation (e.g. bishop e7; castles kingside). They adjust their mental picture accordingly, analyse the position, then make their reply (in notation).

This is pretty difficult (it took me 3 years to learn) but has been demonstrated many times.
I can do two games simultaneously, but my mate has done 10!

20

There have been a number of hoaxes and otherwise later debunked studies and claims that managed to get published in peer-reviewed, professional journals. In the egotistical, competitive “publish or perish” environment of academia, it’s bound to happen. Sometimes even after a thorough debunking occurs, no retraction or apology is forthcoming and the revelations are even hushed up. One that comes to mind is the discovery of the ancient “Sandia Man Cave” in New Mexico by famous archeologist Frank Hibben. A number of exposes have come out about this. It appears he may have even placed artifacts in the cave himself, to later be “discovered” by his students. Later, some students said they found red dirt on some pieces that made it obvious they came from somewhere else. One even had a record number still stamped on it from when it was uncovered the first time - somewhere else. The New Yorker even wrote an article about this in around 1995.

However Frank Hibben was a larger-than-life person who not only attracted a lot of students and attention to the Dept. of Archeology/Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, he bequeathed a lot of money and property to the University when he died. So, hoax or no hoax, his “legacy” lives on and the cave still has a sign identifying it as the location of this famous “find” in which we learned all kinds of new stuff about early man.