Eidetic memory

A photographic memory, also known as eidetic memory, is a mostly colloquial and not always consistent term used to describe certain memory functions. In general, the term describes the ability of a person to be able to remember details of a particular event, which is stored in the form of visual perceptions. The person concerned shall have the impression to see the event as a photo on the right.

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In psychology are instead iconic memory and eidetic memory used as technical terms. The iconic memory here refers to the short-term storage of the ( exact ) visual information in the sensory memory, which includes a period of several hundred milliseconds. In some ( rare ) cases, people can save the detailed visual information also much longer on the iconic memory to come, it then called eidetic memory. Whether, respectively, it is the degree to which in such a case a photo-like storage of information in sensory memory is controversial. The exact use of this term in the literature is not always consistent. A widely used definition of eidetic memory is according to Gray and Gummerman the following:

Studies have about 5 to 10 percent of children up to a certain degree an eidetic memory, but later they usually lose. Known individual cases, which in the literature occasionally a photographic or eidetic memory is attributed are, among others, Kim Peek, Stephen Wiltshire and Solomon Shereshevsky. However, their classification is controversial as "real" eidetic.