![]() “For example, many expert chess players possess a remarkable capacity to record the position of chess pieces at any point from a game,” wrote Hudmon. ![]() Thus, eidetikers' brains are forced to inefficiently store complete images, and this would be considered indicative of developmental immaturity.”ĭon’t feel too bad though – you may not be able to get an eidetic memory, but there’s plenty of evidence that people can train their brains to remember things to a pretty remarkable degree. The idea, scientific skeptic Brian Dunning explained, was that younger children “have not yet developed advanced thought processes such as the ability to store images more efficiently as conceptual abstractions. “Children possess far more capacity for eidetic imagery than adults, suggesting that a developmental change (such as acquiring language skills) may disrupt the potential for eidetic imagery,” says neurobiologist Andy Hudmon in his book Learning and Memory.Īnother hypothesis is that the loss of eidetic memory comes with the development of more abstract thought. Why this is, exactly, is not really known – studies generally find between eight and twelve percent of children exhibit eidetic memory, Taylor explains, but that number dwindles to virtually zero by adulthood. You may have noticed the quote above talked about “children” rather than “people.” That’s because, as they explain, “eidetic memory is an age-related phenomenon Children who have it at preschool age usually lose ability when they go to school.” They’re not known to be correlated with any other trait – except one. “Their memories often contain minor errors, including information that was not present in the original visual stimulus even eidetic memory often appears to be reconstructive.” Who can have an eidetic memory?Įidetic memories are incredibly rare and seem to be scattered fairly randomly. “Eidetikers' memories are clearly remarkable, but they are rarely perfect,” explain Lilienfeld et al in Psychology: From Enquiry to Understanding. Even then, subjects rarely hang on to the image for very long, and their memories are definitely not infallible. Subjects are often given a good 30 seconds of careful study in lab experiments. Firstly, while the common perception of eidetic or photographic memory is that it’s an automatic, involuntary thing, in reality, eidetic recall requires time. Now, there are a couple of things to note there. “Even after a long time, when recalling something perceived earlier, it is as if the child sees it again and can describe it in all the details.” “After a single perception of the material and very little mental processing, the child continues to ‘see’ the material, and restores it perfectly,” the authors continue. “Eidetic memory images are close to perceptual ones in their brightness and distinctness,” explains a recent paper on memory development, published in the Frontline Social Sciences and History Journal. Is eidetic memory perfect?Įidetic memory is very, very good – but it’s not perfect. ![]() Ask an eidetiker about something that happened last Thursday, and they'll likely answer you in the past tense ask them about the photo they were just looking at, and they may well answer in the present tense. What you will be able to do, though, is to see an image, hear a sound, or smell an aroma as if it’s still in front of you, for often just a short while, after it’s gone away.Īnd we really do mean "see," by the way – studies on people who have eidetic memories, sometimes known as eidetikers, have shown that subjects' eyes move about in real-time as if they're still looking at the now-removed image they're describing. If you have an eidetic memory, it probably doesn’t mean you can, say, remember the color of a beetle walking across a table in your neighbor’s garden on April 17, 2008. ![]()
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