Despite considerable effort having been put into the search, nobody with even remotely similar abilities has been found (Merritt, 1979).
(1970) raise concerns about the methodology of the study, and are clearly skeptical of the claims made for Elizabeth, which, they say, if true, would entail “radical changes in thinking on visual processing.” As there is no credible account of anyone else coming anywhere close to duplicating this truly incredible performance in subsequent research, it is probably unwise to give the case much evidential weight. Then, when the second half of the stereogram was presented some hours later, she is said to have been able to eidetically fuse the two halves, so that she could “see” the three-dimensional shape thus produced (normally such 3-D fusion only takes place when the two halves of the stereogram are presented simultaneously, one to each of a subject’s eyes). The most impressive of her unique and surprising alleged feats was that she was supposedly able to use her eidetic ability to remember one half of a million-dot random dot stereogram with unbelievable accuracy. The abilities ascribed to her, however, are not at all typical of those claimed by or for other eidetikers. Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains the story:Ī rather well known case of an alleged adult eidetiker is a woman, known by the pseudonym Elizabeth, studied by Stromeyer & Psotka (1970 Stromeyer, 1970). However, with the scientist looking over their shoulders, not one of them could pull off Elizabeth’s trick. Of that number, 30 wrote in with the right answer, and he visited 15 of them at their homes. Merritt hoped someone might come forward with abilities similar to Elizabeth’s, and he figures that roughly 1 million people tried their hand at the test.
In 1979, a researcher named John Merritt published the results of a photographic memory test he had placed in magazines and newspapers around the country. The article goes on to describe an attempt to find anyone with a photographic memory, but out of a million applicants, no one had a photographic memory: But then in a soap-opera twist, Stromeyer married her, and she was never tested again. Elizabeth seemed to offer the first conclusive proof that photographic memory is possible. She mentally fused the two images to form a random-dot stereogram and then saw a three-dimensional image floating above the surface. Stromeyer showed Elizabeth’s right eye a pattern of 10,000 random dots, and a day later, he showed her left eye another dot pattern. In 1970, a Harvard vision scientist named Charles Stromeyer III published a landmark paper in Nature about a Harvard student named Elizabeth, who could perform an astonishing feat.
Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein and USA Memory Champion, wrote: There was only one verified case of photographic memory, but the researcher married the subject and she was never tested again. There is no evidence of photographic memory Here are several reasons why photographic memory probably does not exist: 1. You will become famous as the first person ever proven to have a photographic memory! Why photographic memory doesn’t exist If you are reading this page because you think you have a photographic memory, please test yourself by working your way to level 10 on Memory League using your photographic memory. Some people do have extra-ordinary memory abilities (test yourself on Memory League), but that is not the same thing as photographic memory.Įidetic Memory is different from photographic memory, but claims of eidetic memory should also be treated skeptically, because it doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as photographic memory, and it’s almost never found in adults. There is no solid evidence that photographic memory exists, and without more evidence, it should be considered unlikely that true “photographic” memory exists. Many people wonder whether photographic memory exists.