COMPARISONS BETWEEN EIDETIC AND VISUAL IMAGERY
Much of the debate about eidetic imagery stems from the question about how
separate eidetic imagery truly is from conventional visual imagery. Many
believe that they are two qualitatively distinct abilities because of the "important
phenomenological differences [which] accompany them and that,
presumably, different sets of internal processes produce them. This
view...treats eidetic imagery as unique and intimately related to the
'raw' processes of perception; visual memory imagery is usually carried
along as rather uninteresting baggage" (Gray and Gummerman, 399).
Others tend to think that eidetic imagery is simply another kind of visual imagery
or that it differs only in its "uncommon vividness or clarity" (Gray and
Gunnerman, 399). Haber (237) takes the stance that eidetic imagery is "a
particular kind of visual imagery, one quite rare. Visual imagery in
general, while having the quality of being seen, usually does not have the
quality of being akin to looking at the stimulus itself. When it has that
latter quality, then it is eidetic. The perceptlike character of the
image distinguishes eidetic imagery from other kinds of visual imagery."
Another way that eidetic imagery is different from visual imagery is that
EI does not seem to be completely under the eidetikers control but rather
is influenced or determined by the specific viewing conditions. There are
tests, however, which are able to powerfully distinguish eidetic imagery
from other kinds of visual imagery. It is the extreme clarity of the
eidetic image that differentiates it from the normal visual image, but at
this point it is still unclear as to how different the two really
are.