Those who truly had the gift could combine the two images into the original illustration - objective evidence, it would seem, that eidetic memory really exists.Įidetic ability fades with age - one investigator guessed that fewer than one in a thousand adults had it. One image would be presented for inspection, then taken away and after a few seconds replaced by the other. Then someone hit on the ingenious notion of decomposing an illustration into two images, each consisting of an apparently meaningless set of lines or dots. Sure, the tests rely on self-report, leading some observers to think the testees were faking it, or at least not exhibiting anything out of the ordinary. Most striking of all, the subject’s eyes move around the nonexistent scene as he describes it, as though it were actually there. The descriptions are in present tense - “I see …” - and given without hesitation. The image has normal coloration, not an afterimage’s complementary colors (blue becomes orange, etc.). It’s not just a retinal afterimage, either. Most offer vague recollections of the image, but perhaps one in twelve can describe it in accurate detail for five minutes or more. Then the illustration is removed and the kid is asked to look at the empty easel and describe what he sees. Typically the child is told to examine but not stare fixedly at an illustration on an easel for 30 seconds. Eidetic memory, to use the clinical term, is the ability to recollect an image so vividly that it appears to be real. But something close to it can be found in some children. Handy though it might be for your next biology exam, photographic memory in the popular sense is probably a myth. The older I get, the less this seems like a joke. Reminds me of a line I heard: We all have photographic memories, it’s just that some of us don’t have any film.
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