Eidetic memory in childhood serves a useful purpose until better techniques and efficient cognitive processes are acquired. Since children have only been conclusively shown to have eidetic faculties, this supports the proposal that eidetic imagery techniques are maladaptive and are not favored as the primary source of memory. These findings mirror eidetic abilities in humans. Bees use orientation and spatial distribution cues preferentially during discrimination tasks.

Strengthening this perspective, research on long-term memory in honeybees has found that these insects use potentially eidetic-like memory as a last resort when trying to distinguish stimuli (Giger & Srinivasan, 1995). Within this abstract idealization of photographic memory, eidetic memory may be a glistening of truthful insight into a maturing thought process that loses its applicability with age, probably by acquiring more efficient memory mechanisms. Overall, Searleman postulates that photographic memory does not exist, beyond being a generalized hyper-phenomenal term referring to absolute recall over long periods. Therefore, it is possible that adults are able to formulate eidetic images but have learned to favor different and presumably more efficient ways to remember images. 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. Eidetic and photographic memory, although slightly different concepts, generally refer to the ability to voluntarily recall or hallucinate viewed images with extreme detailed accuracy.

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