

Adults are more prone to both verbally and visually memorizing images while younger children tend to encode stimuli more visually. He argues that this is because research has demonstrated that if a person verbalizes during the time they are viewing the image this inhibits the formation of an eidetic memory. Searleman estimates that between 2-10 percent of children and less of the elderly have eidetic memory. Eidetekers can add new details to the image or change some details, but to a much smaller degree than people who do not possess this capability. They are able to examine the image as if it were still in front of them and use the present tense when answering questions concerning extremely specific details about the image. However, Searleman argues that eidetic images are not always perfectly represented.

Lawrence University, states that eidetekers, or people who possess this talent, can be identified by staring at an image for 30 seconds and then claiming to still be able to see the image in front of them. Alan Searleman (2007), a professor of psychology at St.

The image retains its actual coloring and texture, and does not move with general eye movements. As described above, eidetic memory is when a person is able to mentally hallucinate a viewed image with extensive detail. Therefore, photographic and eidetic memories are unusual and greatly debated feats of the normal limits of human visual and long-term memory.Įidetic memory is an ability most commonly possessed in children and geriatrics supposedly because of the ways in which scientists believe these images are mentally processed. Eidetic memory is more commonly seen in children, while photographic memory pertains more to adults, and is rarely reported or studied outside of specific case studies. Photographic memory popularly implies perfect memory. In contrast to eidetic memory, photographic memory is a more widespread dubious and cultural phenomenon in which a person has total recall of any image or scene, as a perfectly maintained image in the brain, after the initial viewing.

Eidetic images are unlike ordinary images because the images do not change during eye movements and can be evoked for days to years after the original encounter with the specific scene. These images are mentally projected in space as being sheer or transparent. Eidetic memory is the ability to voluntarily conjure a vivid mental image of a viewed scene, or object, including its color and textured spirit to a precise degree.
