Is this real photographic memory?

General Memory Chat
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I stumbled upon this video on Youtube the other day and this girl claims she has “photographic memory”. https://youtu.be/LMgQ0eXIhzA (Her performance starts at 2:35)

This footage is from a Japanese tv program in which she was asked to memorise one page from a book about Japanese celebrities. Each page has 12 people with their names, birthday, high schools they graduated from, and their hobbies.

So far, there’s nothing peculiar in terms of memorising these details, since I’ve seen other Japanese memory athletes do memory feats on Japanese tv (Like memorise the whole menu at a restaurant including food names, prices, calories, and memorise more than 200 bus stop names while riding a bus and so on), but she read a whole page and memorised all the details in 8.2 seconds ( she made one mistake though).

She’s a medical student at Tokyo University, which is the best university in Japan and even won the Math Olympics so there’s nothing sketchy about her in my point of view.

I’m pretty sure for memory athletes, even memorising the whole book is not impossible given a certain time, but memorising a whole page in less than 10 seconds seems fairly impressive, let alone reading all the details and recalling afterwards in such a short time window.

I have the book she published a few years ago, and she wrote that she used to use the link method for studying when she was little, so it’s obvious she uses mnemonics but is it possible to do that without the loci method? Or does anyone know what kind of mnemonics system she uses?

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I’m not sure, but it looks interesting. Are they well-known celebrities?

She should try Memory League. :slight_smile:

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I know some of them on the page (maybe around 3 out of 12). But most

Also, I forgot to mention but there are schools called 七田式（Shichida-shiki, or Shichida-style）which teach "Right-sided brain trainings such as speed reading, memory techniques and so on and she attended to it since an early age. https://youtu.be/rGfQfwd_7w8

This video is about the school, and in the video one girl memorised 36 items in 8 seconds. As you say, I really wonder how good they score on memory league!!

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It is an impressive feat but I am going to answer the title of this topic and say, no. No, this is not photographic memory.

If she had a photographic memory then she would’ve memorized that page in less than 2 seconds if you count the time it would take to glance at all the information.

Photographic memory is instant.

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I forgot to mention but I don’t think she has a photographic memory, it’s just that she calls her memory capacity as such. Also on Twitter she got a lot of questions, to which she replied that her so-called photographic memory is not perfect at all (x.com). I just wondered what kind of memory systems she uses to achieve that level of speed for memorising and recalling. To me it loos like a combination of speed reading and mnemonics (could be peg-system, link method, or loci method or her original system).

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I wanna say it’s fair enough when speaking to a general audience. It’s a bit like saying heartburn instead of acid reflux, which has about as much to do with your heart as a butterfly is a stick of butter with wings. Also, she probably said it in Japanese, not English.

On this forum of course we’ll end up discussing Eidetic Memory versus Photographic Memory just because people hear have stronger opinions and usually also more background knowledge about these things. At the same time, when you say…

…it’s kinda obvious that this is through training. Trust me, if you showed somebody in Europe or the USA some 12 year old kid doing Flash Anzan… “Wow, amazing… impossible… must be some trick” or something along those lines.

I think, if you speak to a general audience, you can say… Judaism, Islam, Christianity… pick whichever of those you want to mean “photographic memory”… and Europe, usually you get away with only subdividing into Catholics and Prostestants… you go to the US, wow… Reformed, Protestants, and Lutherans are not the same thing… even though Martin Luther reformed things by protesting the status quo.

You see what I mean by… for a general audience… you can probably say “photographic memory”. But, I wonder… if you question really is…

…and you already answer your own question (“obvious”), then why this title for the post.

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I’m skeptical about the idea of “photographic memory”, and eidetic memory is not well understood (if it even exists). I keep an open mind to the possibility, but every case I’ve heard of has another possible explanation. I believe that some people have extraordinary memory skills, but I wouldn’t use the term “photographic memory”.

  • Shereshevsky seemed to have an extremely strong memory, but he used memory techniques, and Luria never really makes a clear distinction between the memory techniques and some kind of natural memory ability. “S” was a professional showman.
  • Hyperthymesia — possibly a result of repetitive thinking Edit: see below for more discussion about that.
  • Drawing scenes from memory — does it only work for one type of visual image that has been intensively trained since a young age? It’s an amazing skill, but it doesn’t sound like the memorization ability works like a camera. Would the skill work for unfamiliar images like snowflakes? I am not diminishing the ability in any way — just trying to determine whether it works like a camera.
  • Kim Peek — another amazing person, but it seems like the stories are anecdotal. Some of the research was done by people who think that ESP and telepathy are reasonable explanations for savant skills, so it’s difficult to be certain about exactly what was going on.

Related: Eidetic Memory

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Voila! Excellent timing @Josh :wink:

How about we start here: Etymology of ‘photography’ - Oxford Reference

Etymology of ‘photography’

From photos (ϕοτοσ), light, and graphos (γραοσ), writing, delineation, or painting. Although ‘heliography’, ‘photogeny’, and ‘daguerreotypy’, were first used as alternatives, ‘photography’ eventually gained universal precedence as the preferred name.

I think it’s only fair to make that your starting point when talking about “photographic” memory. First thing when you google is Wikipedia with…

Eidetic memory (/aɪˈdɛtɪk/ eye-DET-ik ; more commonly called photographic memory ) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision for a brief period after seeing it only once,[1]and without using a mnemonic device.[2] Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory are popularly used interchangeably,[1] they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to view memories like photographs for a few minutes,[3] and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall pages of text or numbers, or similar, in great detail.[4][5] When the concepts are distinguished, eidetic memory is reported to occur in a small number of children and generally not found in adults,[2][6] while true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist.[5][7]

Or have a look at Scientific American: Is there such a thing as a photographic memory? And if so, can it be learned? | Scientific American …and keep in mind that only because they got “science” in their name, doesn’t mean they’re always right. Is it the same, is it not the same…

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I do not think hyperthymesia is a result of repetitive thinking. I have a lot of moments where detailed information from the past suddenly pops up in my mind like dates of certain events, what things looked like, facts etc, all kinds of things I never thought about or even consciously processed. When I think about this experience and my other feats of memory then Hyperthymesia, to me, does not seem to be that much of a stretch.

Kim peek never trained his memory or used mnemonics, I don’t think he was even capable of training, yet he had these amazing feats. Even if only 10% of those feats were real, Hyperthymesia would still be very possible.

Just my thoughts on Hyperthymesia. :+1: :slight_smile:

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I started working backwards from Wikipedia and ordered textbooks by some of the people cited there. I haven’t finished reading through them, but one mentioned:

“Shereshevsky could remember long lists but needed 3 to 4 seconds to encode each item.”

“S. could memorize a table of 50 numbers in 2.5 to 3 minutes.”

He was a good mnemonist, but that isn’t “photographic” memory.

Drawing pictures from memory about a specific topic that is well trained might be related to “expert knowledge”.

“…people who develop expertise in a particular area will usually have a remarkable memory for patterns, facts, and new information related to their special area of knowledge. What is important to realize is that this increased memory ability is rarely, if ever a primary goal of the people who acquire expert knowledge. Instead, the remarkable memory performance of these individuals is an unintentional by-product that develops owing to the vast amounts of practice needed to obtain expertise.” [see studies on chess memorization]

Repetitive thoughts are a form of repetition, so that’s a practiced technique. If someone gets hit on the head and starts having repetitive thoughts that result in memory for life events, that isn’t “photographic” memory either.

Here’s a section from the textbook Memory from a Broader Perspective by Alan Searleman and Douglas Herrmann. Searleman is frequently cited about eidetic memory.

An eidetic image differs from other forms of visual imagery in several important ways, besides the fact that the person confidently reports that the image still seems to be actually present when it is not… For instance, an eidetic image is not simply a long afterimage, because an afterimage moves around when you move your eyes and is usually a different color than the original image… an eidetic image doesn’t move as you move your eyes, and it is in the same color as the original photo.

Now it is certainly true that many people can form good visual images from memory. For instance, it is not uncommon for a person who has studied hard to be able, when taking an exam, to conjure up a good visual image of a page in his or her textbook… Would this qualify as eidetic imagery? Probably not, since a common visual image created from memory (such as the image of a page in a well-studied book) would not have the following characteristics that are true of most eidetic images. Eidetic images usually fade away involuntarily, and this fading occurs part by part. Typically, it’s not possible to control which part of the image fades away and which part remains visible. Unlike common visual images created from memory, most eidetic images last only from about half a minute to several minutes, and it is possible to voluntarily terminate an eidetic image forever by the simple act of blinking. Furthermore, once gone from view, and eidetic image can rarely be retrieved.

A common misconception is that eidetic imagery is synonymous with photographic memory. This is quite understandable. You might expect that a person who claims to still see a picture after it has been removed would be able to have a perfect memory of the original picture, and a perfect memory is what is implied by the term photographic memory. However, as it turns out, the accuracy of many eidetic images is far from perfect. In fact, besides often being sketchy on details, it is not unusual for subjects to alter visual details and even add some that were never in the original! This suggests that eidetic images are certainly not photographic in nature but are reconstructed from memory and can be influenced like other memories (both visual and nonvisual) by cognitive biases.

It goes on to talk about savantism and mnemonists, providing many references (which I haven’t read yet).

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I’m not sure about everyone, but check out this article.

Edit: definitely check out this video (below) for an alternate viewpoint.

It’s difficult for me to tell what is real. Media are not credible when it comes to extraordinary human abilities, and the world’s most cited expert in that field thinks that ESP, telepathy, and reincarnation are reasonable explanations for extraordinary skills. (I don’t believe in those things.)

Whether it’s due to repetitive thoughts or not, that kind of autobiographical memory is impressive, so I don’t mean to downplay anyone’s abilities. I’m just trying to maintain a healthy level of skepticism, because the natural tendencies of the media and popular culture are to go way too far in the other direction. :slight_smile:

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Jill Price under more strict testing than a docudrama was shown to make plenty of mistakes and didn’t have the claimed memory ability.

Rather she did a lot of ruminating over her early experiences.

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Jill price might be a different topic because she kept journals but there are others who claim to possess Hyperthymesia and they don’t show any sign of repetitive thinking or OCD.

This person is a good example. He is a regular kid who is just doing his thing while experiencing Hyperthymesia.

https://youtu.be/9Bnu0UrgxBg

The world champion Dominic O’brien himself tests this boy and confirms he is legit.

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Thanks for the interesting video. That gives some evidence that it might not be due to repetitive thinking.

I wonder why he didn’t want to answer the question at 35:03.

It looks like she might have synesthesia here.

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I am unclear as to just what is meant by “photographic memory”. It’s common to use the camera as an analogy for visual images but the brain is not a camera and the differences are sometimes important.

A camera records without comprehension. It can photograph a page of Japanese script as competently as English text without understanding either.

So in the simplest sense of “photographic”, were one were able to record a truly photographic image, then one need not actually read the page or have any knowledge of the meanings of the words. One could, in theory, memorize a page in an unfamiliar language and then go onto learn the language and translate it accurately. Or one could write it out for a native speaker to read. One could record a textbook but only read it later.

Is this the claim for photographic memory?

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Yes. Photographic memory is supposed to be just like a camera; unbiased, lasts forever and is 100% accurate.

Eidetic memory has only one of these 3 elements down, the unbiased part. Unbiased means that it doesn’t matter what you look at, it will perform the same “snapshot” every time. Let’s say someone has an eidetic memory that is around 80% accurate. This means his eidetic memory is around 80% accurate every time, doesn’t matter what that person is looking at or for how long that person is looking at something. You can also not control eidetic memory, compounding the idea of it being unbiased.

Photographic memory is not only unbiased, it is also 100% accurate and does not fade away or become distorted. Eidetic memory only lasts a couple of seconds to a few minutes and can be distorted.

Photographic memory is essentially what a ‘perfect eidetic memory’ would be.

I’ve had a long discussion with some other members here in the forum about the existence of eidetic memory in another topic. The paper that is most refered to when people talk about eidetic memory is decades old and also has some holes in it. It is stated in the same paper that there could be a chance that the “eidetikers” they tested, actually didn’t possess eidetic memory at all and only happen to ‘fit’ the description of the predicted experiences of a true eidetiker. One of these is that a true eidetic would explain their recall in present time, as if the picture is still there but this is not a watertight assumption.

If the existence of eidetic memory is not 100% certain then there could be a chance that photographic memory is impossible.

I found 2 major reasons myself why photographic memory might not be possible.

1: Photographic memory demands perfect eyesight. The information seen by our eyes cannot be distorted on its way to our brain. A slip up on our eyes part means no 100% accuracy when recalling and we wouldn’t be able to tell if this was because of our eyes or because of our brain.

2: False memories cannot occur. As soon as 1 false memory is observed, the photographic memory has been disproved.

These two things are so incredibly difficult to test. How do you for example test if someone does not have false memories? Even if you test someone a 10,000 times, as soon as they make a mistake on try 10,001, their memory is not ‘photographic’ anymore.

However, like I said before on the other topic, we are humans. To us 99,99% accuracy seems the same as 100% accuracy. I wouldn’t mind if we call a 99,99% accurate memory a photographic memory.

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Having worked in photography and image processing, I must point out that photographs are not perfect records either. Usually, their fidelity is so superior to the human eye that it’s of no consequence.

There’s no need to get hung up on 100% accuracy. It never happens. Even the most refined equipment will have some small uncertainty. It’s dictated by fundamental physics.

But yes, agree that in practical terms a photographic memory should perform as well as an actual photograph.

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I can’t seem to open the link to the original posted video. Can someone please tell me her name so I can look up her book?

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The video from the link has been deleted so I uploaded on vimeo.
There’s two videos on her memory feats.

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You are the best thing since sliced Havarti ! Thank you!

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