Eric Manshun Choi wrote:
>> I am in the process of writing a science fiction story in which one of
> the characters has the ability to literally remember EVERYTHING that he
> sees or reads.
It all depends on what you mean by perfect, and what you mean by
remembering. For example, we know that people sometimes have some piece
of information stored, but are not always able to retrieve it actively.
An example is the tip of the tongue phenomenon. Later retrieval
demonstrates that the information was there, it was just inaccessible
temporarily for some reason.
I suspect that active retrieval of all related data would be likely to
slow down any operations where searching memory for a specific piece
of information was necessary. It has been suggested that forgetting (or
at least active suppression of certain stored information) has advantages
at times. There's a whole literature on Directed Forgetting that gets at
that question.
The other issue is whether or not the memory is truly accurate. We know
that people often reconstruct some details of their memories based on
schema and scripts. Does perfect memory mean storage of exact, accurate
sensory experience? That would be very burdensome, I expect. Imagine how
terrible that would be if he experienced anything really traumatic and
was reminded of it somehow. It'd be like re-living it entirely.
--
Steven J. Pierce
Master's Student in Experimental Psychology
Mississippi State University
E-Mail: sjp2 at ra.msstate.edu
WWW: http://www2.msstate.edu/~sjp2/index.html
