I have a friend who claims he has a photographic memory, but does anyone really have a photographic memory? It’s something many of us often wish for, as it would make life a lot easier.

In an article in Scientific American,  Alan Searleman, a professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University, describes the concept and testing of eidetic imagery, a term which seems to be the nearest thing to what people refer to as photographic memory.

Does Anyone Really Have a Photographic Memory?

In the scientific literature, the term eidetic imagery comes closest to what is popularly called photographic memory. The most common way to identify eidetikers (as people with eidetic imagery are often called) is by the Picture Elicitation Method. In it, an unfamiliar picture is placed on an easel and a person carefully scans the entire scene. After 30 seconds have elapsed, the picture is removed from view, and the person is asked to continue to look at the easel and to report anything that they can observe. People possessing eidetic imagery will confidently claim to still “see” the picture. In addition, they can scan it and examine different parts of it just as if the picture were still physically present. Consequently, one of the hallmarks of eidetic imagery is that eidetikers use the present tense when answering questions about the missing picture, and they can report in extraordinary detail what it contained.

You might expect that an individual who claims to still see a picture after it has been removed would be able to have a perfect memory of the original picture. After all, a perfect memory is what is usually implied by the commonly used phrase “photographic memory.” As it turns out, however, the accuracy of many eidetic images is far from perfect. In fact, besides often being sketchy on some details, it is not unusual for eidetikers to alter visual details and even to invent some that were never in the original. This suggests that eidetic images are certainly not photographic in nature but instead are reconstructed from memory and can be influenced like other memories (both visual and nonvisual) by cognitive biases and expectations.

You can read the entire article here.

Does anyone really have a photographic memory?

It would be so much easier if we could remember everything we wanted to by having our brains take a photograph of it. As disappointing as it is, for now we have few answers to the question, “Does Anyone Really Have a Photographic Memory?” In the interim, the majority of us will just have to keep looking for, finding, and practicing memory techniques that work for each of us personally. Share your comments below.