Eidetic memory: Encyclopedia II - Eidetic memory - Controversy

Eidetic memory - Controversy

Dr. Marvin Minsky, in his book The Society of Mind, claims to have been unable to verify claims of eidetic memory (see sections 15.3 & 15.6) and considers reports of eidetic memory to be an "unfounded myth".

Support for the belief that eidetic memory could be a myth was supplied by the psychologist Adriaan de Groot, who conducted an experiment into the ability of chess Grandmasters to memorise complex positions of chess pieces on a chess board. Initially it was found that these experts could recall surprising amounts of information, far more than non-experts, suggesting eidetic skills. However, when the experts were presented with arrangements of chess pieces that could never occur in an actual game, their recall was no better than the non-experts, implying that they had developed an ability to organise certain types of information, rather than possessing innate eidetic ability.

Some people attribute exceptional powers of memory to enhanced memory techniques as opposed to any kind of innate difference in the brain. However, support for the belief that eidetic memory is a real phenomenon has been supplied by several studies. Charles Stromeyer studied a woman named Elizabeth who could recall poetry written in a foreign language that she didn't know years after she had first seen the poem. A.R. Luria wrote a famous account Mind of a Mnemonist of a subject with a remarkable memory, S.V. Shereshevskii; among various extraordinary feats, he could memorize innumerable lists of random words and recall them perfectly decades later. Luria believed the man had effectively unlimited recall. See his article for further information about his methods.

The Guinness Book of Records lists people with extraordinary memories. For example, on July 2, 2005, Akira Haraguchi, managed to recite pi's first 83,431 decimal places from memory, and on November 3, 1994, Tom Groves memorized the order of cards in a randomly shuffled 52-card deck in 42.01 seconds. The authors of the Guinness Book of Records, Norris and Ross McWhirter, themselves had extraordinary memory, in that they could recall any entry in the book on demand, and indeed did so weekly in response to audience questions on the long-running television show Record Breakers.

Mathematician John von Neumann is said to have had total recall. The late Stu Ungar, one of the world's most successful poker and gin rummy players, had a similar (and profitable) gift, as does chess genius Bobby Fischer.

There have been some cases where young children have demonstrated the ability to focus on a picture and then recall it with perfect clarity minutes later. However, these skills are usually lost as they grow older.

Some autistics display extraordinary memory, as well as those with similar conditions like Asperger's syndrome. Autistic savants are a rarity but they, in particular, show signs of spectacular memory; one notable example is Kim Peek, who can recall about 9600 books from memory.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Controversy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki