The psychologist Marvin Minsky supports this idea in his book, The Society of Mind, when he states “….we often hear about people with ‘photographic memories’ that enable them to quickly memorize all the fine details of a complicated picture or a page of text in a few seconds. The ultimate and oft accepted conclusion by scientists and psychologists alike in this instance and the others listed is that eidetic memory specifically does not exist however those with extraordinary ability to memorize and recall information does exist. In trials by Adriaan de Groot chess experts could recall the exact details of chess pieces on a board as they may potentially happen during a game, but could not recall them with accuracy in instances where the pieces could not have ended up that way in actual play. These memories seem to result from a combination of innate abilities, combined with zealous study and familiarity with the material, such as the Bible or fine art.” (Gordon 2012) His assertion that familiarity with the material and an overall good memory is the true reason for the photographic memory phenomenon appears to be shared by many who have conducted research on the subject. Even visual memories that seem to approach the photographic ideal are far from truly photographic. Barry Gordon, a neurology professor from John Hopkins University School of Medicine, addressed him with a response: “…most people’s memory for visual material is much better and more detailed than our recall of most other kinds of material.” “But this isn’t really a photographic memory it just shows us the normal difference between types of memory.
In an issue of Scientific American, a man name Peter Gordon posed the question on whether what he believed to be his photographic memory exists. (Foer 2006) Unable to do so, their ability was dismissed as being the result of extensive rehearsal of the original texts and a strong long term memory, but not the result of eidetic memory as the recall on pin placement was minimal at best. The Shass Pollaks were then asked to recall which words had the pins through them after studying the altered texts. A psychologist named George Stratton decided to test their claim by sticking pins through the Talmud text to be memorized. Shass Pollaks, scholars who are able to recall accurately 5,422 pages of Talmud, claimed to have done so through photographic memory of the text and the arrangement of the words. While the woman’s ability seems to prove Stromeyer’s case, no repeat testing was performed and no one else has ever been able to replicate the ability so most scientists and psychologists dismiss it as invalid. Stromeyer’s conclusion was that this woman had proven the existence of the photographic memory through her ability to create the 3D image in her mind with information gathered over two days, and through her ability to recall with accuracy the poetry. (Foer 2006) His examinee, Elizabeth, also claimed to be able to recall poetry in foreign languages she did not understand. She had the ability to mentally combine them to create a 3D image. She was shown a picture with 10,0000 random dots in only her right eye, and the next day was given another set of random dots for her left eye.
#Near eidetic memory pro
On the pro side is Charles Stromeyer III, a vision scientist, who published a paper about a woman with an unexplainable ability. Various tests have been done in attempts to prove or disprove the existence of eidetic memory but thus far have remained ultimately negative towards the existence of an eidetic memory. The question that many scientists and psychologists have raised is whether or not eidetic memory truly exists or if there are other explanations for why people can recall vast amounts of information with great accuracy based solely on images of the information they are recalling. (Adams 2006) Her ability is self-attributed to a strong eidetic memory which is commonly known as the “photographic” memory, a proposed type of memory in which someone sees an image and recalls it with great accuracy. The Guinness World Record for the most decimal places or pi recited by memory is held by Akira Haraguchi at 83,431 places.
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