# Picture perfect **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [September 1, 2000, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580 "2000-09-01T02:03:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DustinB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d78d45/32.png) [@DustinB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DustinB)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2000, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/1 "2000-09-01T02:03:50Z")
I just read the column on photographic memory. At the end Cecil talks about S., who was read the first four lines of the Divine Comedy in Italian, without knowing the language, and remembered them exactly, even fifteen years later. “He associated each syllable with a mental image…and so on, for 48 syllables.” The standard poetic line in Italian (and the one in which the Comedy is written) is the hendecasyllable (11 syllables). If he was read only the first four lines (already pretty strange, since the poem is composed in tercets and the first tercet forms a complete sentence), then he would have had to remember 44 syllables. It’s the French Alexandrine which has 12 syllables. Actually, maybe he was read the first four lines precisely because they don’t have a neat syntactic end, making it (potentially) more difficult to remember. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2000, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/2 "2000-09-01T15:10:22Z")
Welcome to the SDMB, and thank you for posting your comment. Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site. If not, please indicate where you found this column (from a book? the most recent column in your local news source?) so others may perhaps read it too. I was unable to find the column on-line, so I am assuming that you are referring to the latest Straight Dope column. If any members of the Teeming Millions can find the source of the column, please post in this thread. * * * moderator, “[Comments on Cecil’s Columns](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?forumid=1)” forum ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2000, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/3 "2000-09-01T20:57:00Z")
Also, DustinB, since this S. didn’t know Italian, perhaps he thought there were 48 syllables when in fact there were only 44 if the words were pronounced correctly? ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2000, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/4 "2000-09-02T04:39:36Z")
Hi Arnold I just read the column in the latest edition of Spectator magazine, in Durham, North Carolina. What is Chronos’ trick? [This week’s column.](http://straightdope.com/columns/000901.html) It’s a question about photographic memory. The guy who memorized the Italian used a mnemonic device, but was able to repeat the phrase years later with no preparation. ---
**Author:** ![DustinB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d78d45/32.png) [@DustinB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DustinB)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/5 "2000-09-04T19:51:14Z")
Arnold: Yes, well, everything depends upon how the lines were read to S. If you pronounced all the vowels in the four lines, there would be 49 syllables, so he could have been forced to come up with 48 syllabic associations. In this case, one would have to ascertain where the figure 48 came from: ie whether someone recording the experiment counted 48, or whether someone afterwards simply assumed that it would be that number (in which case my comment about the Alexandrine is probably accurate). Sorry about the confusion regarding the article. I was not up on message protocol. Thanks for the tip. ---
**Author:** ![hardlyb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f17d59/32.png) [@hardlyb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hardlyb)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/6 "2000-09-05T03:11:31Z")
This is a little off the topic of the previous messages for this thread, but it relates to the column. I’m wondering if anyone else has similar experiences to relate: When I was a kid I had a sort of photographic memory. For example, I remember once in 7th grade not wanting to study for a test, so I just looked at each page in the chapter in my history text on which we were going to be tested, and then during the test the next day I “read” the pages by closing my eyes and recalling the text. Fortunately the test was just regurgitation, since I wouldn’t have had time to organize my thoughts well enough to write an essay. My memory had been even better when I was younger. When I was five or six I could recall everything that happened for months afterward, and I didn’t understand that not everyone could do that. I recall getting very upset with my parents once because the didn’t recall a remark that one of them had made on a car trip a few months before – in fact, I was convinced at the time that they were lying, because I couldn’t imagine anyone forgetting things. I was never tested, so I don’t know that I would have been able to merge images, but I do recall being able to solve mazes in my head after having looked at them in a book. Anyway, until I was about 14 I never had take notes in class, write down a phone number, etc. Then gradually I lost the ability to remember things so easily, but it took me years to realize that I couldn’t effortlessly remember everything. It may just be a coincidence, but I started forgetting things about the time I really began to be able to think abstractly. I am convinced that some sort of cognitive change occurred at that time, and perhaps I lost my memory as a result of that. I still have a better than average memory, but it isn’t extraordinary. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/7 "2000-09-05T12:40:28Z")
I can only speak from personal experience. I’m 45 and still have the type of memory where I recall things as if they happened about 5 minutes ago. I once repeated our last converstion per vebatim with a person I hadn’t seen in 5 years. I don’t know how I do it. It’s nothing on my part; just how my brain works. It’s very compartimentalized (ha!). It’s really not good for much, but I’m learning how to read, speak and understand foreign languages simply by listening to cast CDS. ---
**Author:** ![hardlyb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f17d59/32.png) [@hardlyb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hardlyb)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/8 "2000-09-05T16:50:01Z")
That’s pretty neat, even if you don’t have much use for it. I have an aunt that remembers every mistake I’ve ever made as if it happened yesterday, but I think that this is different. (I tried to tell my wife about this, and she thought that I was kidding, until we drove my aunt someplace and said aunt picked up the thread of a castigation that she had been working on 25 years before.) Does your memory work with visual things as well? How about ideas? I have a good memory for ideas, but I have a lot of trouble bringing up the names of things (especially of people – I once was unable to “find” one of my brother’s names when I was introducing him to someone, and he just let me hang there, twisting slowly). ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/9 "2000-09-05T21:14:15Z")
I’ve had trouble with visuals all my life. My vision is about 20/240. I can do complicated math in my head, remember most things incredibly well, and compartmentalize each person I know so I remember everything about them forever. I’m wicked with spelling, phone numbers, e-mails and web addresses. ---
**Author:** ![AnsaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b782af/32.png) [@AnsaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnsaMan)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2000, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/10 "2000-09-05T23:04:36Z")
I have what can be called a photographic memory, but it requires some preparation and reinforcement at regular intervals. I work at a supermarket and I am constantly asked where things are. I invariably close my eyes and I can visualize the exact location of the item, BUT CURIOUSLY since I have not taken any pains to visualize the aisle numbers, I have to glace up at the aisle signs to tell the person the corresponding aisle number even though I can clearly recreate a visual image of the item that is requested. As I am writing, I can clearly recall, for example, the layout of the coffee aisle and even view specific items that have been of interest to me, but I cannot recall clearly what is on the shelves above with as great specificity unless I have spent a particular amount of time looking at that particular item. It seems to be positively related to the amount of time spent looking at the item or the general layout. As a teenager, I used to participate in a masonic youth group in which we were required to memorize long tracts of information. During one extended speech, which I had studied extensively, I “forgot” part of the presentation. I closed my eyes and I read it off the page. I can STILL quote passages I was required to learn in high school, some 25 years ago. However, I have noticed that “noise” tends to creep into very old visualizations and I cannot recall very small details It seems to deal with patterns. For example: I cannot visualize my checks and tell you the routing numbers since I have never taken the trouble to really look at, but as the dairy manager, I can close my eyes while on the aisle and visualize the backstock that I have in the walk-in refrigerator, but ONLY if I have handled that piece of stock and PLACED it in that specific spot. When I worked the register, I could remember the names of repeat customers by closing my eyes and visualizing their checks and reading their names from the check since I have to approve checks very carefully and concentrated carefully and repeatedly. I could tell when only their address or phone number changed and not the check design. Some places I have lived are VERY vivid and I have not seen them for years, I can, in my mind’s eye, see specific spots in my home town. I also have a VERY powerful memory for music, especially if I have listened to it repeatedly. I could tell one record from another based only on the pops and clicks and various noise on the record and I can identify incredibly small differences between performances. I can “hear” music that I have memorized, but it seems to be a sequence of memory and I have to “play through” the piece to recall specific lyrics, only “recalling” the part when it is reached. On a technical note, there was a debate over the existance of the “minds eye” in philosophical circles and one researcher, a nun whose name I cannot recall, but whose picture I can see in my mind, told people to visualize solids they had been shown in their minds eye. Curiously, people exhibited a constant and repeatable timing in the rate of rotation in three dimensions, bolstering the idea that people were actually manipulating a visual image that perhaps was being fed to the visual center of the brain through sources other than the normal optic paths. This is reinforced by the fact that with me, I find I function much better if I briefly close my eyes and shut out competing real time visual images when attempting to conjure an image. ---
**Author:** ![hardlyb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f17d59/32.png) [@hardlyb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hardlyb)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2000, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/11 "2000-09-06T03:17:57Z")
Thanks AnsaMan, this is very interesting. My experience, while I still had that kind of memory, was that it also required some preparation (at least once I got older than 5 or 6). I couldn’t read pages of text in my head unless I looked at it a certain way (whatever way that was), although it was more a matter of intensity rather than time spent staring at things. I was especially interested in the comment about recalling music. One area in which my memory is still fairly close to, although still less than, my childhood is for movies. That is, I can see one or two seconds of almost any movie that I’ve ever seen, even if it was many years ago, and instantly recognize it. It’s not infallible, but it’s surprisingly reliable given how my memory has otherwise decayed. I have to both see and hear the movie for this to work, though. It’s much less reliable with only one of the sound or picture. Annie-Xmas – do you think that your poor eyesight is related to the kind of memory that you have? That is, do you think that your memory would be as good for visual stuff as it is for “textual information” if you had always had 20/20 vision? The reason that I ask is that I have wondered if the reason that my memory decayed was because I got better at recalling ideas, and at seeing connections between things. In particular, I think that the reason that I’m still good at recalling movies is that they get filed away as a combination of plot, visual, and acoustic information. I can’t remember anyone’s birthday (I even have trouble with those of my wife and kids), so I guess I don’t classify this the same way as “ideas”… ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2000, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/picture-perfect/31580/12 "2000-09-07T12:33:36Z")
Now that I think about it, not having good eyesite probably helps me remember things. Everyone knows that eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. People don’t remember visuals very well. You know what George W. Bush said; what was he wearing while he said it? I realize I learned how to spell after learning how to type, started learning phone numbers when push button phones came in. That’s all tactile–what buttons do you push in what order? I remember what I hear more than anything, but I can always say something enough to keep it in my memory.