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One day in April 1929, the editor of a Moscow newspaper was handing out assignments when he noticed that one of his reporters had not taken any notes. The editor pulled the reporter aside and asked him, but the man named Solomon Shereshevsky revealed that he never took notes because he had a good memory. Then, before the editors could argue, Seleshevsky began to recite the entire meeting, down to the last detail. The editor was surprised, thought it was a good story, and suggested that Shereshevsky conduct scientific measurements of his memory. A few days later, Seleshevsky officially arrived at the Communist Pedagogical Institute, where he was introduced to the budding neuroscientist Alexander Luria. Over the next 15 years, Luria would subject Seleshevsky—referred to only as “S” in his work—to a series of increasingly complex memory tasks, all of which he defeated one by one with supernatural ease. No matter what Luria threw at him—long strings or matrices of numbers, lengthy speeches, even poems in foreign languages that he neither read nor spoke—Sereshevsky could memorize them accurately in just a few minutes. Even more astonishingly, he seemed to be able to retain this information permanently; years later, he was still able to recite the string of numbers Luria had given him - forward and backward. In the mind of a memory scientist, he wrote in his classic case study of Shereshevsky in 1968:
"I have to admit that there are no obvious limits to his memory."
The case of Solomon Shereshevsky is one of the best-known and most frequently cited examples of what is often called "photographic memory" (photographic memory or eidetic memory) - the ability to retain information as clearly and accurately as taking a picture. Throughout history, from scientists Nikola Tesla (Nikola Tesla) and John von Neumann (John von Neumann) to writers Truman Capote (Truman Capote), to PhilippinesdictatorFerdinand Marcos (Ferdinand Marcos, and even Mr. T., many people claim to possess this extraordinary gift—often manifested in the ability to memorize large amounts of text at once. But while the concept of photographic memory is common in pop culture, the scientific reality of the phenomenon is quite different from how it's often portrayed. In fact, as far as most psychologists and neuroscientists are concerned, it may not even exist.
It is important to note that although the terms photographic memory and literal memory are often used interchangeably, they are actually two distinct phenomena. Scott Lilienfeld, professor of psychology at Emory University According to Lilienfeld, photographic memory comes from the Greek eidos, or "visible form," which refers to a person's ability to "...have a visual image in their mind's eye with such clarity that they can describe it perfectly or almost perfectly...just as we can describe the details of a painting before us with near-perfect accuracy."
According to Ralph Norman Haber, a leading expert in the field Haber, this ability exists almost exclusively in children between the ages of 6 and 10—and only in a very small percentage. In a series of experiments conducted in the late 1970s, Haber determined that approximately 2-10% of elementary school-age children had the ability to retain clear images in their visual field. However, these images typically disappear from view within a minute or two and are hardly the hyper-accurate recordings that photographic memory implies. The fact that such children were no better able to accurately describe real-life images than children who described the same scene from memory alone suggests that, like all memory, the process is reconstructive and more like drawing than taking a picture. Considering that this ability disappears by age 12, Haber believes that in the absence of complex language skills, young children rely more on visual images for memory processing. As children learn to express themselves verbally and think more abstractly, they rely less and less on visual memory. In fact, with one possible exception, true photographic memories have never been found in adults.
In 1970, Harvard psychologist Charles Stromeyer published a study called "Photographic Memory in Adults." The subject of the study was a Harvard student who claimed to have a true photographic memory. To test her abilities, Strohmeyer created a series of synthetic anaglyphs that looked like random patterns of black dots but stacked up to form a unique image, like crosses or letters of the alphabet. Elizabeth was asked to look at one half of the stereogram with one eye and the other half with the other eye, then mentally combine the images and report what she saw. Incredibly, even when presented with a pattern of ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or even a million dots, Elizabeth was able to overlay the images and describe the resulting image with ease—regardless of how much time had passed between viewings. Strohmeyer even designed a series of stereograms that, when superimposed in various combinations, produce different images. Once again, Elizabeth was able to pick up any two patterns in her brain and combine them at will - something that is impossible in normal human memory.
But although these remarkable achievements seemed to provide compelling evidence for the existence of photographic memory in adults, after Stromeyer married his test subject, Elisabeth refused to participate in any further experiments. Over the next few years, the scientific community became increasingly skeptical of the validity of Strohmeyer's research methods, with some speculating that given the unusual closeness between researcher and subject, Elizabeth could have easily seen the superimposed images in advance, or overheard Strohmeyer discussing them. In 1979, researcher John Merritt, skeptical of Stromeyer's claims, published a series of stereogram -dot memory tests in newspapers across the United States, hoping that people with the same abilities would come forward. An estimated 1 million people took the test and wrote to Merritt, of whom only 30 answered the questions correctly. But when Merritt visited the homes of 15 people interviewed, none could repeat Elizabeth's feat. Since then, no one has been able to demonstrate true photographic memory under laboratory conditions, leading most in the psychology community to conclude that—at least in adults—the ability simply does not exist.
But when most people think of photographic memory, they tend to imagine a Solomon Shereshevsky-like ability—the ability to instantly and accurately remember large amounts of text or entire conversations. But the reality here is much different than most people imagine, and those who are blessed - or in many cases cursed - have amazing memories and fall into one of three broad categories. First there are the so-called distinguished scholars, the most famous of whom is the late King Peake. Dustin Hoffman (Dustin Hoffman) was the inspiration for Raymond Babbitt, the character played in the 1988 film "Rain Main." When Peake died in 2009 at the age of 58, he had memorized the contents of more than 12,000 books and read one page every 8-12 seconds. Other famous memory scholars include artist Stephen Wiltshire, who can sketch out ultra-accurate cityscapes after a brief helicopter flight and musician Derek Paravicini, who can play any piece of music after only hearing it once. But for these people, great memories come at a huge cost, as all academics suffer from some form of autism or other intellectual or social disability. As a result, their amazing abilities are often limited to one hyper-specific area, while other skills are weakened. For example, Kim Peek has poor motor and cognitive skills and needs help from her father in daily tasks, while Stephen Wiltshire easily gets lost in the city he accurately captures. For the most part, extraordinary semantic memory—that is, the ability to retain facts and figures—seems to come at the expense of episodic memory—our ability to remember the everyday events of our lives in narrative form. For example, J.S., an autistic savant, has virtually no episodic memory and cannot recall the general context of a given day.As a result, he had to rely on rote memorization of facts, often memorizing entire conversations in order to extract the most basic meaning. This suggests that, far from being a flaw that limits our potential, our ability to forget irrelevant details and generalize information is key to our ability to effectively navigate the world around us. Furthermore, scholars' amazing memories are far from "photographic"; even Stephen Wiltshire's sketches are not 100% accurate. Despite his gifts, his memory can still be reconstructed like anyone else's.
A second category of people often thought to have photographic memories are people with the rare form of hyperthyroidism. People with this disorder have extraordinary autobiographical memories and can remember seemingly unrelated details almost every day, such as the weather, what was on the news or TV, or what they had for breakfast. For example, when asked what happened on August 16, 1977, Jill Price, the first person to discover the situation, immediately recalled the death of Elvis Presley and also recalled that California's tax initiative had passed and a plane crashed in Chicago. She even remembered the date her interviewer, researcher James McGaugh, traveled to Germany—a date McGaugh himself had forgotten. Fewer than 30 people worldwide have been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, but as with other cases of so-called photographic memories, the reality of the condition is not what it initially seems. For one thing, people with hyperthyroidism are actually no better than other people at remembering the details of a given day, but what they remember they don't forget. Therefore, for a person with hyperthyroidism, every day of their life seems like yesterday. While this may seem like a very useful ability, for most people with this disorder, not being able to forget is actually a huge burden. Negative memories and emotions usually fade over time, but in the minds of people with hyperthyroidism, they remain forever fresh and raw, making it difficult for them to maintain intimate relationships or recover from trauma. For example, when Jill Price's husband died after just two years of marriage, the persistence of this traumatic memory plunged her into a deep depression that lasted for years.
For some people, the persistence of old memories is enough to overwhelm them and keep them living in the past. It has been verified once again that great memories can only come at a huge personal cost.
The third and final category of people thought to have photographic memories are the mnemologists. These are what most people think of when they imagine photographic memory: People with average or above-average intelligence and social abilities are able to instantly remember and effortlessly retrieve large amounts of general information. But contrary to popular belief, mnemologists essentially do not possess any extraordinary natural abilities and have instead learned to use a variety of mnemonic techniques to help them memorize information. The most common of these techniques are encoding, positional methods, and thought palaces, all of which involve linking semantic memory to episodic memory, which is easier for most people to retrieve. In coding, you link one piece of information to another piece of information that you have memorized—for example, by associating the number sequence 1-9-4-5 with the year World War II ended—while in the positional and mind palace methods, you anchor specific words, numbers, or other pieces of information to locations or objects in real or imagined space, and then mentally "walk" that space. For centuries, stage mnemonics have wowed audiences with apparently superhuman memory abilities using just these simple tricks. For some, acquiring these skills requires years of dedicated practice, while for others the ability comes naturally, but in all cases the basic mental processes involved are the same. Virtually all so-called cases of photographic memory that do not involve savant syndrome or hyperthyroidism turn out to be simply the result of memory techniques combined with simple hard work. For example, a group of Jewish Talmudic scholars known as Shas Pollak were famous for allegedly memorizing 5,422 pages of the Babylonian Talmud.It is reported that their memory is so good that if a pin is passed through the entire text, they can recall all the words that the pin passes through. But even this extraordinary ability was less innate ability and more sheer bloody determination; no other subject is better remembered by Shasu Pollack scholars than by anyone else. The same is true for other memory champions, such as Lu Chao, who is the current record holder for memorizing the most pi and digits. In 2009, researchers tested Chao and several other subjects of the same age and education to determine their "digit span"—how well they could remember a string of numbers presented at a rate of one digit per second. Although he memorized 67,000 digits of pi, Chao's digit span was only 8.83, while the average of the others was 9.27. Super achievements once again prove that it is not innate ability, but dedication and hard work. Studies of other extraordinary people, such as chess champions who are said to have memorized millions of games and scenarios, have yielded similar results.
But what about the brilliant Solomon Seleshevsky, the poster child for photographic memory? Sorry to disappoint you, but despite his legendary abilities, Shereshevsky was ultimately just another mnemonicist—a naturally gifted mnemonicist, but a mnemonicist nonetheless. According to Alexander Luria, Seleshevsky had learned to intuitively and instinctively use common memory devices such as the method of place or the mind palace, often using familiar locations such as Moscow's Gorky Street to anchor his memories. But the real key to his abilities lies in a rare synesthesia state, in which stimulation of one of the senses produces sensations in another or more of the other senses. For example, when Shereshevsky sees a specific color, letter, or number, he also sees it as a musical note, a taste, a smell, a touch, and sometimes all four senses at the same time. This strong sensory association allowed him to more easily link semantic and episodic memories, as Luria recorded about Shereshevsky memorizing a string of numbers:
"Take the number 1 as an example. This is a proud, well-built man; 2 is a spirited woman; 3 is a A gloomy person; 6 is a man with swollen feet; 7 is a man with a moustache; and 8 is a very strong woman - a sack within a sack. As for the number 87, I see a fat woman and a man with a twirling moustache."
Many of these associations can be very specific and detailed. For example, when Seleshevsky heard the word "restaurant," he imagined an entrance, customers, an Romanian orchestra tuning for them, and so on. Similarly, the word "cockroach" in Yiddish conjures up images of a dent in a metal chamber pot, a loaf of black bread, and "the light from a lamp that could not push away all the darkness in the room."
But, as you may have suspected by now, this extraordinary ability is not without its drawbacks, and for Shereshevsky, his gift was often a terrible burden. For example, Seleshevsky was forced to avoid certain activities, such as reading a newspaper at breakfast, because the smell caused by the printed words clashed with the taste of the food. Other sensations may be more disturbing, such as the following incident:
"One time I went to buy ice cream. I walked up to the vendor and asked her what ice cream she had. "Fruit ice cream," she said. But she answered in such a loud voice that it came out of her mouth There was a lot of coal, black cinders, and I couldn't buy ice cream after she responded like this."
Strangely, Seleshevsky had difficulty remembering information that was different from the literal meaning, and had difficulty recognizing faces that he considered "very varied." But his greatest burden may be his inability to forget anything. In a desperate attempt to purge unwanted memories, Shereshevsky would write them on scraps of paper and burn them, but this method rarely worked.Soon, the accumulation of memories became too overwhelming, and at the suggestion of his editor, Seleshevsky quit journalism and became a professional memory expert, performing his extraordinary feats of memory in front of live audiences. This ultimately proved unattainable, and Shereshevsky soon quit the job and faded into obscurity, reportedly becoming a taxi driver until his death from complications of alcohol poisoning in 1958.
All these examples demonstrate that, in the words of cognitive psychologist Marvin Minsky , photographic memory is psychology's great "unfounded myth," ubiquitous in popular culture but nowhere to be found in the real world:
"We often hear that people have 'photographic memories' , the ability to quickly remember all the details of a complex picture or page of text. As far as I know, all these stories are baseless myths and only professional magicians or charlatans could produce such demonstrations."
So why does the idea of photographic memory persist in the popular imagination despite a complete lack of evidence for its existence? As with any other so-called "natural ability" in math, music, sports, and other fields, the idea that one can be naturally good at something without practice and hard work is compelling in its own right—as evidenced by countless online surveys, quizzes, and courses that claim the ability to unlock one's inherent memory potential. Claiming to have a photographic memory also provides a convenient and common defense against plagiarism. In 2006, the author Kaavya Viswanathan was accused of plagiarizing 29 passages from her best-selling novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life from the Books of Young Author Megan McCafferty. Viswanathan defended her innocence on the grounds that she had a photographic memory and could not casually remember other people's work. In fact, this phenomenon is not unique to Viswanathan and has nothing to do with photographic memory. Countless artists have unknowingly copied the work of other artists, something scientists call implicit memory, and have even been observed under laboratory conditions. But it's not hard to see why Viswanathan and other artists would lean toward this particular defense; after all, it's the most humble of brags: "I'm not a plagiarist, I just have a photographic memory." Messier
Translator/Lancelot
Original text/www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2022/06/is-photographic-memory-actually-a-thing/
This article is published under the Creative Commons Agreement (BY-NC). The article is the author's opinion only and does not necessarily represent the position of zeroorez
