Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Photographic and/or Audiovisual Memory

My DD7 was able to repeat songs or tell what was next after seeing or hearing something once. This began when she was about one year old. She was recently doing a homework assignment where she had to make a connection with a Cam Jansen book and she wrote that she could also remember what she saw and read, although she wasn�t as fast. One of her preschool teachers (highly gifted) thought my DD had an audiovisual memory and a selective photographic memory. We also know she is a visual learner based on profiles sent home by her school.

Does anyone have similar experiences or have any advice to offer?

I had/ semi have such a memory. Evidenced by the ability to recall details about a scene, furnishings, clothing, sights, sounds and details of a place or situation that I dOn't remember noticing while I was there. Ie. I don't have to pay attention because I'll remember things I'm not even noticing. Of course my mind has dulled with age. When I was 9 I went to a place I visited only a couple times when I was 2. I told mom how the furniture used to be arranged there. I still get faded videos without sound an photos from my memories.
I read that cam Jensen too as a young kid and experimented as a teenager with the technique. I found that with practice I could sit perfectly still in a room and blinking rapidly moving only my eyes from one edge of my periphery back and forth repeatedly in a straight line I could memorize a room and prove it with trivial questions later.
Sometimes with this kind of mind you visualize when people describe things.

Memory is a funny thing and I am trying to understand as well.

DS8 may have some form of audiovisual photographic memory. Im really not sure when he started reading because at 18 mths, hed recite pages from his books. When he was 3, he started rattling off this long message about "aft doors" and stopped midway to ask what a lavatory was. Turned out it was the safety message read out on the plane- we had gone on a holiday a few months earlier. At the Wisc, the psych commented that he may have photographic memory bevause he didn't have to check back to know what symbol went with what in the coding section. Never mind he got tired, stopped writing, and bombed the section. He can spell out long words backwards (his vision therapist asked him as a test of visual memory). Once, we were watching Star Trek. There was some question about who fired the lasers. He paused for awhile, replayed the segment in his head and told us " The Klingons did it because the laser was red".

I think all this shows up in his huge vocabulary and encyclopedic knowledge.

But, this ability is not uniformed. He regularly can't remember what he ate for breakfast, he forgets instructions or doesn't even hear them. He has CAPD, but his memory makes him uncharacteristic.

When DS8 was 2.5, I figured out that he had a photographic memory. He had watched me write a grocery list, and about two weeks later he asked for crackers and I went to get some. He looked up into the cabinet at the crackers, and started reciting the grocery list from two weeks earlier -- "Ritz. Toilet paper. Light bulbs...." and so on. I ran to tell my mom, and when I got to that part he recited several more items from the list to her. My brother came along, and when we got to that part of the story, he continued farther down the list. That was when I realized how he had learned to read so easily!

Sadly, I don't think he still has the photographic memory to that extent.

I had sort of a photographic memory, I think. It wasn't immediate after just glancing at something once--but if I read something carefully and concentrated on it, I could later visualize the page clearly. This did not help at all with the lack of academic challenge and developing study skills. And as I got older I was always afraid of unintentionally plagiarizing. I do think that this particular skill? gift? has faded from lack of use. Or lack of sleep. Or both!

Or from old age

This really strikes a chord here. DD 6.5 started doing this at age one. I had signed her up for a kindermusik class and she loved listening to the CD of songs at home. When we were in class and they would play an individual song, she would then shout out the name of the next song on the CD ("Shiny Dinah!") before a single note was played. She could also finish all the lines of a book (Harold and the Purple Crayon, Corduroy) even if she had only heard it a few times. Same with nightly prayers.

My dd is not a visual-spatial learner, so I'd lean towards saying hers is auditory. However, she has always noticed numbers her whole life and many of those are visual. For example, at the age of two, she memorized all the 4-digit addresses in our neighborhood. At the same age, She would request I play deejay in the car by asking for the songs in the 6-cd-changer by number ("Disc 5, song 12, please). I suppose those are numbers, too...

In fact, awhile back I started a thread about number/date memory. It's here if you want to look at it...

http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/79029/1.html

Nice to know we're not alone...

Great responses! Thank you for sharing!

La Texican, I remember DD walking into the house when she was 1 or 2 years old and immediately be able to tell you if something changed. �Why did the pictures change places? Where did this toy go?� When she was 2, at Christmas I was adding a thing or two per day as I pulled them from storage. Without fail, she noticed everything even down to a miniature Santa and Mrs. Claus that I had placed in the back of a curio cabinet. If I changed nothing that day, she would not say anything.

Nautigal, you made an interesting comment about memory fading with time. I have noticed some fading as well, but most of it seems to be predicated on interest level. DD started playing piano a year ago and she could play by memory after playing the song once or twice. However, if she doesn�t like the song or if it is really difficult to where she has to concentrate on one bar at a time, it typically takes her longer to memorize. She still retains her earlier memory pieces. Her piano teacher says she is a child with many hidden talents.

My DD would also request songs on CD by track and number and has everyone�s birthday memorized. At the age of 3, we started buying DD her very own calendar because she was so obsessed with dates. She will also be able to refer to the picture on the calendar based on the month. (X�s birthday is in December and has the picture of the puppy in the candy cane jar.) Some of the things she comes up with will totally blow me away!

DD also started reading at the age of 3 and was able to process words in chunks. We did Hooked on Phonics which she blew through and then went on the Master Reader. She memorizes words for spelling tests upon sight, but doesn�t always remember the harder reading passages. I�m guessing if she has to slow down and concentrate word for word, the memory slips.

Blob, it is strange that you mention that he doesn�t remember what he had for breakfast. My DD has trouble remembering what she had for lunch sometimes too!