Photogenic memory I believe is a mental condition that allows people to remember things easiler than average people because their brain can take a snapshot of what they see. Even though it's rare I bet someone like that could memorize entire books on chess. I thought about it after seeing it on an episode of CSI. What do you guys think about this?
No need to apologize, you are right. A photogenic memory makes a funny mental picture though.
I have a photographic-pornographic memory... is that the same thing?
I remember this topic vividly...pregnant pause ;) ...from a college psychology course. Chess grandmasters and any of us chess goofballs looked at pieces on a chessboard for a period of time, and after the pieces were taken away, they were asked to place the pieces in their original positions. The grandmasters could replicate the position of pieces on a chess board with shocking accuracy--but only if the pieces had occupied game-like positions.
When the pieces were randomly distributed across the chessboard, the grandmasters could not remember the positions any better than the rest of us. So, the conclusion--grandmasters were better able to connect how the pieces interacted with one another than daffy old us, but it was their superior understanding of the relationships among the pieces, not photographic memory, that enabled them to better place the pieces on the correct squares.
*Pedant alert* The technical term is "eidetic memory." As far as I recall (ha), cognitive scientists have yet to find evidence of eidetic/photographic memory. There are people, however, who can amaze with prodigious memory feats. Marilu Henner (the siren in "Taxi"), for example, can remember exactly what she did on any day of her life. I believe cognitive scientists are very curious about abilities like hers, but have yet to find an explanation for them.
If anybody knows better, by all means please correct my not so prodigious memory. :)
I remember a chessbase article once detailing Magnus Carlsen's study habits. After a tournament when he was 15 years old (or thereabouts) his trainer (or father, or someone... i DON'T have a photographic memory) was showing slides of positions Magnus had studied. Magnus would look at the position, he could detail the position with the players, who won, and what page of what book the slide was taken from.
Safe to say that if Magnus does not have eidetic memory, he sure comes close.
Kim lives in Salt Lake City, my wife and I saw him at the library one day where he frequents. He was the inspiration for the movie rainman of course.
An interesting sidenote (much more than a sidenote actually), is Kim's father. Kim's mother left the family at a young age and Kim's father has not left Kim's side all these many years. Truly amazing devotion, as Kim is not fully capable to care for himself.
Kim is an absolutely amazing story of a Savant (or idiot savant, which is an ironic if not apt term). You can name any date in history and he will tell you within seconds what day of the week it was.
I remember seeing a show on Discovery channel, where they discussed an experiment where they measured the brain activity of people playing chess.
What they found was that for a regular person, there was most activity in the region assosiated with logic. However, Susan Polgar primarily used the region assosiated with facial recognition.
Yes, Fran Peek is a very devoted and loving father. To this day he combs Kim's hair, brushes his teeth, and buttons his shirts.
The Soviet psyhologist Luria a few tens years studied the Moscow journalist Schereshevskiy /?/, who was been one of first well known fenomens, with unlimited memory...
He can instantly memorize any facts and data, and recall then, even after a few years...
He put all data at own memory, like anything at the known to him city, on the streets, houses, appartments,.. When he recalled the data, he imagined that cities, streets, houses back, like a real subjects, and justnamed the things or data.
There are a lot of unique persons all over the world!
What a dirty old man
What a Puritan
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