"[7] "Eidetikers", as those who possess this ability are called, report a vivid afterimage that lingers in the visual field with their eyes appearing to scan across the image as it is described.
It has been hypothesized that language acquisition and verbal skills allow older children to think more abstractly and thus rely less on visual memory systems.
Extensive research has failed to demonstrate consistent correlations between the presence of eidetic imagery and any cognitive, intellectual, neurological, or emotional measure.
[16] Skepticism about the existence of eidetic memory was fueled around 1970 by Charles Stromeyer, who studied his future wife, Elizabeth, who claimed that she could recall poetry written in a foreign language that she did not understand years after she had first seen the poem.
However, the methods used in the testing procedures could be considered questionable (especially given the extraordinary nature of the claims being made),[19] as is the fact that the researcher married his subject.
Additionally, the fact that the tests have never been repeated (Elizabeth has consistently refused to repeat them)[6] raises further concerns for journalist Joshua Foer who pursued the case in a 2006 article in Slate magazine concentrating on cases of unconscious plagiarism, expanding the discussion in Moonwalking with Einstein to assert that, of the people rigorously scientifically tested, no one claiming to have long-term eidetic memory had this ability proven.
[6][20] American cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky, in his book The Society of Mind (1988), considered reports of photographic memory to be an "unfounded myth",[21] and that there is no scientific consensus regarding the nature, the proper definition, or even the very existence of eidetic imagery, even in children.
[4] Lilienfeld et al. stated: "Some psychologists believe that eidetic memory reflects an unusually long persistence of the iconic image in some lucky people".
"[22] To constitute photographic or eidetic memory, the visual recall must persist without the use of mnemonics, expert talent, or other cognitive strategies.
Individuals identified as having a condition known as hyperthymesia are able to remember very intricate details of their own personal lives, but the ability seems not to extend to other, non-autobiographical information.
In fact, Price's unusual autobiographical memory has been attributed as a byproduct of compulsively making journal and diary entries.
[26][27][28] Others have not been thoroughly tested, though savant Stephen Wiltshire[29][30][31] can look at a subject once and then produce, often before an audience, an accurate and detailed drawing of it, and has drawn entire cities from memory, based on single, brief helicopter rides; his six-metre drawing of 305 square miles of New York City is based on a single twenty-minute helicopter ride.