THE COMPARISON BETWEEN EIDETIC IMAGERY AND THE
ABILITIES OF "S"
"S", the famous subject of A.R. Luria,
is known throughout the world for his incredible memorial powers. He used
his synesthetic capabilities to remember long strings of words and
syllables and had unlimited capacities. Part of his technique involved
intense visual imagery where words or sounds actually had visual
equivalents in his head.
Due to this powerful visual imaging, he is
often referred to as an eidetiker. However, "S" usually "used vivid 'imagination
imagery' that did not reproduce preceding stimulation at all" (Gray and Gummerman,
402). For instance, "S" would take each word that he was memorizing and
place it in a particular location on his mental "street," thereby locking
it in his memory. Afterwards, all he had to do to reproduce the string
of words was to walk back down that "street" and "see" where each word
was placed. This differs from eidetic imagery because he did not
reproduce the actual image in his mind and reproduce that; instead, he made his own images
that corresponded with his synesthetic sensitivities. Therefore, while
"S" did have amazing visual capabilities, he was not using eidetic
imagery.