I’ve read the Cecil column addressing this question and I thought it was a little equivocal–it suggested some doubt but also ended on another subject (not eidetic memory, but improved recall).
In psychology today (meaning a class session), the teacher asked for a show of hands from anyone who has photographic memory (a source said this is different from eidetic, though I can’t remember which exact source, which probably means I don’t have it?), as it is known colloquially.
Only one girl raised her hand. My teacher then conversed with the student for a few lines, asking “were you tested?” and “has it faded?” I then asked the girl herself after class and she said her dad can tell me how many windows a building has after viewing it for 5 seconds (which raises the question, how can he possibly move his feet to see the windows on the other 3 sides of the building in that short a time period, but exaggeration can be allowed). She said she’s not that good–she can only recite 50 pages of a textbook after reading through it for many hours. She can also tell me where a passage is (meaning page number or something like top left corner of a left page?) and more impressively, where the punctuation marks are.
My own memory is probably somewhere from slightly above average to distinctly above average, though after spending 20 hours reading a 600 page textbook over a span of 3 days, I can only answer questions asked about the text, rather than recite a paragraph, much less 50 pages of it).
If it does exist, I’d think that it’d be a tremendous aid; why buy textbooks when you can spend a few hours in the bookstore memorizing them, and why not memorize the dictionary?
Seeing how I decidedly know I don’t have it, I’m also interested in whether it’s innate (the girl’s father also had it, after all), or whether the only possible alternative results in improved recall rather than the ability itself, as Cecil suggested, and how big of a gap is there between someone like the girl from my class and mnemonists like S who use techniques but don’t have eidetic memory.
Eidetic memory does exist, but not always in the sense of your brain taking a picture like a camera and it’s fused into your memory forever. This type of memory is not voluntary, it just happens. Everyone’s brain does this to some degree, but most people use cognitive recall instead of thinking in pictures. Eidetic memory can also have it’s drawbacks…
Say you leave a black umbrella against a white wall for a week. Then one day, your significant other moves the umbrella into the closet. The laymen may walk by the wall and notice “hey, the umbrella is gone.” The eidetic may look at the wall quickly–and the pictoral memory of the umbrella is so strong, the eidetic will still “see” the umbrella there.
There is also strong suggestion that memory and brain function are definitely inherited.
BTW, the polymath Jon von Neumann could, among many other amazing feats (such as memorizing telephone books), complete random passages read to him taken from books he had read as a child and had not looked at since.
And while those sites are very interesting, they will not show you REGULAR people with eidetic memory. The people you see are savants. If your are an everyday person, and want to know if you think eidetically it’s simple…
If you can’t remember things unless you close your eyes, look at a blank wall, or need to stare off all the time in order to “see” what your brain sees in order to remember, then you think in pictures and may have eidetic memory. Savants have amazing access to subconsious memory. This is not the case with your regular joe. If your brain sees in pictures, then it is entirely possible to train your brain to be eidetically high-functioning.
If you do not see in pics, then you probably can’t just train your brain to do this. Although I hear they are doing amazing things with quantum neuro technology, and that Sony has applied for a patent for an invention that will allow people to “taste” things during game play. OOOOOAAHHHH!
It does exist, not always permanent, but does that mean that it is sometimes permanent, or rarely?
Does that mean that people who have eidetic memories don’t have the regular cognitive memory that most people use? I remember the girl said that her memory otherwise is probably below average. What exactly does it mean for the brain to see in pictures. I can recall some images and tell you what they look like (like a hot dog ad or something random) but I don’t actually see the hot dog ad in full display on the white wall before me.
Isaac Asimov had one. I heard this from him directly. It helped his writing speed in that he didn’t have to take time to leaf through reference material.
My wife knew someone in college with eidetic memory, with the interesting property that it was accessible only linearly. If she wanted to find something on page 50 of a book, she had to mentally leaf through the first 49 pages to get at it.
I have limited eidetic memory. Mine is pictoral in a spatial sense.
I don’t remember everything exactly, but if I want to, I can easily memorize passages, simply by “remembering” how they looked on the page (to break it down, I un-focus my eyes and “see” the page in question, and simply read it from that mental picture.) It made memorizing lines for plays very quick and easy.
When I’m NOT trying, it manifests as a general knowledge of where I saw things or where I read something (as in - this quote was on the left-hand page of this book, in the middle 5th section of the book, starting in the center of the text block, on the fourth or fifth line down from the top.) I see a sortof fuzzy imprint of that page, and the section in question is essentially brighter than the rest of it - like my brain is shining a flashlight on it.
I also use it for maps - if I am driving somewhere, I have to see a map first. I have a very hard time comprehending directions if I can’t trace them out on a map. Likewise, if I have driven to somewhere once, I can find it again and direct other people to it almost always perfectly.
When I am stressed out or not paying attention, I simply don’t “capture” the images, so I have to rely on normal memory processes (where was I before this, what was I doing, what was the context of the passage I’m looking for, do I remember these landmarks, etc.)
I don’t think I have a bad regular memory, I just accept that it’s totally different from my ‘spatial’ memory, and that the other memory style isn’t as detailed or precise for me.
The rest of your post could have been written by me (and, in fact, you sort of saved me from having to write a long post).
My college roommate, who was a linguistics major, and did coursework in how memory functions, was the first one to note that I had some sort of eidetic memory.
As with you, i can often place where a bit of information is in a book, by how the page layout looks (it’s far easier in a book with illustrations ).
If I’ve driven to (or ridden to) a place in a car, I can always get back there…with one interesting exception: if I’ve only been there in the daytime, I can have a difficult time getting there at night for the first time (and vice-versa).
so being able to recite a passage only through rehearsal is proof that I don’t have it?
How exactly do you capture a page from a textbook? Is it a quick sideward glance? Has it ever been the case that the first time you’ve read the words on a page was on the mental image, without actually having read the page? When I read I have to hear my mind reading it.
And how long of passage are we talking here? 50 pages at a time? How long would it take to capture 50 pages? 50 seconds?
If it’s any consolation, I’m utterly craptastic at “physical memory”. As my fencing coach in college noted, I’m a “slow physical learner”. It took me many months to learn how to ride a bike, I was a terrible driver for the first three or four years I was behind the wheel, and it took years before I could type with any speed.
I mean I don’t need much consolation but I’d like to know more about how the process works, like what do you mean unfocus and read it off the page in your mind, how did it get there in the first place, how long (or how easily is “easily”) it took you, how you recall it (unless they’re all before your mind’s eye simultaneously).
I have a very similar sort of memory. It comes in useful with studying, because I can quickly find the information I’ve previously read by picturing the layout of the page, including what graphs or photos were on that page.
I also have very good map and spatial memory, sometimes remembering where things are years later after having only briefly looked at the map.
My regular, non-visual memory is superior as well, I would say. I don’t put a great deal of effort into remembering- random facts just stick in my brain like glue.
I would be hesitant to describe myself as having a photographic or eidetic memory, though. I can’t recite a passage I’ve read or describe how many windows were on a building in a photograph, for instance.
Well, Lasciel is probably going to have to give you a more complete answer on that one; I’ve never acted, and I’ve never had to memorize big chunks of text like that.
I can tell you that, when I spent a few years (during college) in a conservative Christian church, one of the forms of Scripture study which we did was memorizing Biblical verses. We had these little flash cards (maybe 1" by 2") with each verse printed on them. When I’d memorize them, and then go to recall a verse later, I’d actually see the flash card itself in my mind’s eye. Now, 20+ years later, as I’m recalling this, I can still see the flash card image for a verse.
I have a very similar sort of memory. It comes in useful with studying, because I can quickly find the information I’ve previously read by picturing the layout of the page, including what graphs or photos were on that page.
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Even I can do that! How else can someone memorize a graph?
But what I can’t do is read text off the image in my head. Or, could it be that I just don’t know how to imprint a legible image onto my mind’s eye (wishful thinking by assuming I actually have whatever we’re talking about).
Also, kenobi, even though you might know a lot of useless knowledge, have you also applied it to useful knowledge? Was school a breeze?
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