Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Eidetic memory experience?

I shouldn't even post this. It's weird and I don't know very much about it.
I have always had a very sharp photographic memory that has came and gone throughout my life. An example my mother told me was when I was 9 I visited an apartment I had visited when I was 2. Somebody else lived in the apartment. I described the furniture that used to be there. At this point in my life I sometimes get visual pictures of memories, but they're blurry and if I try to look closely at them they disappear. I can recognize what the scene was and the place or event. An example is, I just tried to think of an example and i saw a blurry photograph (literally) a photograph in my mother's photo album of a blond girl I knew at one point with our hands up on a dragon rollercoaster. It's likely that I saw that photo album three years ago, and of course I've seen it many times. Then I remembered the name of the town we lived in then. The picture was there for a second, verry blurry, and I can't be sure the rollercoaster looked like a dragon. I can be sure of the placement of the arms and the front of the rollercoaster in that scene, if I were to draw it from that flash of memory. In fact that excercise was part of how I sharpened it those years ago when I meditated on sharpening it.

When I was a teenager I practiced meditation and was able to sharpen it. It might have been through effort and intention or it might be that certain ages are more likely than others. Right now sometimes a visual memory will flit through my head. I wonder if other people don't do that (must not be if there's a word for it). If not, then what kind of memories do other people have? I also remember stories of events, it's more like knowledge. Like you know 2+2 or the story of Red Ridinghood, but it's in words not audible or visible. Is that the normal kind of memory?

Regarding the eidedict memory I know that when I try really hard or care about "righteousness" I start to have less incorrect memories. I have to judge my memories and decide it's unacceptable to get the details wrong, then my memories become more accurate and everytime I have a memory where the details are wrong it starts to stick out like a sore thumb, then I get less memories with incorrect details. There's been a couple of times in my life when these things interested me and I worked on them and I involved whoever was around me to check my progress and accuracy.
I notice that I remember things that family or long time friends don't remember, and they remember things that I don't, and we remember things differently. I remember them saying things years ago, and saying a different thing now. At the level I'm functioning at I know that I could be right or wrong or they could be. This is how normal is.

I just tried again. My brain is being literal today. I visualized another photograph. It was of my neighbors kid. The details of the kid were crisp and clear. (but now the details are gone) but while it was there the kid in the photo was clear like in highdefinition photos, the boarder was a little less clear, andI know that the photo has another kid in it that was missing in my visualization. But the details I did see was a picture perfect copy of the picture. When was the last time I saw that picture? I added some photos to an album a couple of days ago, so I probably saw it then, but I can't remember. If I sit here and think about it I can probably remember wether I saw it or not then, and either way I might ir might not remember a few days from now (without trying) exactly what was happening the last time I saw that photo.

I should probably rewrite this post for readability, but it's already embarassing enough because it seems too "woo-woo" or personal and it seems like something the internet might mock. I "shared" a facebook meme that said something like, "I'm the type of girl that will bust out laughing at something that happened yesterday.

There's two more related funnies. I tried to remember a recent example of a visual memory, because I know I've had one in the last two weeks, but I got impatient and just thought of another one instead of trying to remember.

The other funny is now I'm sitting in front of the school waiting for my kid. I'm reading the latest Robert Jordan book, but because I tried to use my minds eye earlier a few other visual images flitted through my periphreal vision. One was just a miniskirt and midriff and upper legs only. That reminded me of a C.S. Lewis book I read years ago (you know he wrote more than Narnia and apologetics, right?) and in that book a guy somehow looked inside the mind of a woman he knew. One thing he was surprised by was that in his mind faces were sharp and clothes were blurry, but in her mind all the faces were blurry but the clothes were sharp. Everybody has memories. How else can you remember if it's not audible, visual, or story? I guess the difference is accuracy and the amount of detail.

That's interesting, La Texican. I love reading about others' memory. My husband gets no audible or visual memory (he literally has to read out loud or count on his fingers), but he has an amazing short term memory. I get it all, even the words. I'm not sure what counts as eidetic, since there seems to be so many different versions, so I don't know if I have it.

When I write a shopping list, I can visualise everything in the supermarket. I walk myself down the aisles and I can see all the food on the shelves. I can also "see" where I'm going after I turn out the lights, as I remember where everything is in its exact spot. I don't know if this is what everyone does, or not.

Maybe more along the lines... I remember past dates and events, and what everyone was wearing, songs playing, names of everyone...

Y'all might enjoy the book "Pieces of Light" written by a current memory researcher. He weaves interesting anecdotes of his and others in with contemporary research on how memory is constructed and reconstructed. Good read.

Oh, DD also remembers things like what day of the week her 5th birthday was on.

Yeah, my reference to my son also being a walking calendar is about knowing every random date and its day for the past and future few years. Although I read in this forum that it may be savantism. I don't know the difference, to be honest.

Well, there are a few areas in school where he truly shines with this gift. He attended a school that had the children memorize a passage every 4 weeks. He hated studying at a younger age (he was 8) and he had to memorize a 2 page passage. He refused to study it, looked at it once, maybe twice, the night before, and that was it. He was chosen as best speaker for his grade too. I try very hard not to do repetition with him because it is like fingernails on a chalkboard. He now attends Stanford's Online High School, and while the work load can be a bit heavy, it still doesn't seem like it takes him very much time to study. I found it very unusual at a very young age, so I have been aware of it for a while, but it does continue to amaze me. He knows more about music history than anyone I know. At 9 he was obsessed with guns (gun history and construction) and once in an airport, the pilot, also a very gun knowledgeable, saw his encyclopedia and began to talk to him, then quiz him. They talked for over 30 minutes, and he turned to me and said, not only does he know more than any child I have ever met, but more than any adult I have ever known.

To be honest, he was very challenging for me to challenge. I am glad I have people who have PhDs in their fields instructing him now!

My DD cannot do this, which I do think of as a sort of savant ability. However, she remembers days of the week for significant events. Like, she might remember that she had music class on her 5th birthday (she is now 9), so it was a Wednesday. I find this amazing, but my own memory is terrible. She remembers other little details of this type. Also, the main subject that requires memorization in her present school is science. I have noticed that when she takes science quizzes with questions like, "What is evaporation?" she answers with the exact words she wrote down in her notebook during class. (She never studies for these tests.) It's just really easy for her to memorize stuff. Still, I don't think she really has a photographic memory, per se.

My son started off remembering coinciding days, but turned into ... by the time he was five. He used to put all his teddies' "birthdays" into my phone and just remembered everything

Memory is a tricky thing. It is hard to distinguish an eidetic memory and an awesome one. I used to have a great memory, and I was like your DD in not having to study for a test and just remembering the answers. Since having children, I now have a terrible short term memory, but still a good long term one.

DD had incredible memory when she was tiny. REALLY amazing stuff.

She has lost most of it now at 13, and recalls very few things from before she was three. A few, but they don't have the sharp clarity of detail that they did when she was four and five.

She also seemed to have an AUDITORY and temporal version of it-- it wasn't for print text, ever. She has a very strong spatial memory, and so do I-- we don't remember text, we recall WHERE something is. Sometimes that is sufficient to recall headings or clear enough that I can "zoom" to see what I want to recall. But often not, too.

It's pretty much savant level, in my case. ANYWHERE that I've been, I can find again. I recently found a little restaurant in the Latin Quarter (tucked into an alley) that I'd been to once the week before (led by a school tour guide through the streets for about a mile), and managed to find it using landmarking and just... well, okay, this sounds silly, but a sort of internal compass. My DH no longer doubts my ability to act as navigator. I can almost do this from maps.

I also always know what time it is. This was a fun parlor trick for my friends in middle and high school-- to cover my eyes and ask me what time it was. I was always right-- usually within a minute or two.

But I do not have a good auditory memory, and my DH does. That's where DD gets that one from.


ETA: I'm convinced that most people have one or more savant-type skills/abilities. I'm a human homing pigeon and I have this... thing.... for color. Like perfect pitch, but visual. That one is TRULY eidectic. Not useful, but interesting. I can match paint colors from memory. Even years later. LOL.


DD just reads at superhuman speed and reads people-- she's like an empath. I think that's her savant thing.