Photographic Memory : Photographic Memory – Is It for Real?

Photographic memory or eidetic memory is believed to be found in 10 percent of the population and is considered a rare event. This type of memory is controversial and not well defined at this time. It is believed to be found in some children however, they tend to lose this memory when they enter adulthood. Some neuroscientists, psychiatrists and linquists define photographic memory as a person’s ability to recall images, sounds or objects accurately as well as large amounts of information and do this quickly. Think of it as a xerox kind of memory. Perhaps you may think that this would be an advantage but in reality in many cases it isn’t. All too often you pick up too much information that is irrelevant and that can block the meaning of what you’re seeing. My father had a photographic memory with an IQ of 160. He could recite whole pages of text and tell you what page it was on yet had little grasp of the deeper meaning. On the other hand, I have brain connections between the math centers on the right brain with the frontal eye fields. This allows me to see equations in picture or graph form in my mind’s eye. I have found this to be useful in that I don’t have to remember a complicated equation because I can derive from the mental picture that I see. This has been an advantage in physics, chemistry and biology coursework.

Many people claim to have some form of photographic memory but in fact do not. Most of these individuals are actually using mnemonic devices to hold on to information quickly. Mnemonic devices means you play some game with the information with numbers, various shapes or position in space and rebuild the information from that image. This is not a photographic memory. Photographic memory remembers everything about the event with great precision as it stands. No game playing. This is what makes it difficult to determine if an individual actually has eidetic memory. How much an individual has learned interferes with the actual memory event. Eidetic memory should be quick and accurate.

Unfortunately the controversy over photographic memory stems from an overuse of this term to refer to unusual memory ability in general. Most unusual memory skills have been observed to come from learned skills and natural abilities as well as high level reading ability and not perfect recall. Eidetic recall is supposed to be unprocessed by the brain which is very different from regular memory which is processed and interpreted and has meaning attached to it. Early studies done on professional chess players were misinterpreted. I’m sure your aware that chess players can remember all the moves in a game and can memorize complex moves to the point they know all possible moves. This was once thought to be photographic in nature. However, further studies blew that myth away. Researchers placed chess pieces in places that were illegal moves and found that these chess players had no better memory than the average person. The professional chess player has ways of organizing chess moves in memory that made them look like they had photographic memories. Most people are capable of memorizing complicated chess moves if given enough time by using an alpha-numeric code.

There is no doubt that some people have incredible memories however, eidetic memory is an extremely rare event. In the strictest sense, eidetic memory refers to perfect recall of some information without mental processing of any kind or use of mnemonic devices. There is no doubt that the use of mnemonic devices can greatly increase you memory ability so make use of these devices. I often provide various devices to my college students to lessen the burden of memorizing vast quantities of data. Simple schematics with numbers/letters can hold a lot of information in a condensed form.

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