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Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
So yesterday, he recites the whole thing. I'm not going to tell you that he did it perfectly, but Oh. My. God. I can't believe he can do this. Is this normal?
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When I was in school I took child psych for four weeks. The only thing I remember from it is that an astonishing number of preliterate kids have photographic memories. I don't remember the exact figures, but maybe one in twenty or so. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense --- such people would have been extremely useful and powerful in pre-literacy days, and we shouldn't be astonished that every town had a person who could recite "The Odyssey" from memory after hearing it a few times. Now, we find this stunning, but back then it was just something that some people could do.
However, the skill impedes reading development, because you need to "clear" each letter or word from your memory as you comprehend it, or the pictures all start to overlap. Very few people retain photographic memory skill after learning to read; those who do call it more of a curse than a blessing, because a true photographic memory means you're not able to let bad memories go or fade, ever, as most of us do.
Try showing lil' Ty pictures, then take each one away and ask questions about what he saw. It helps if you lay the photos flat on the table; many kids with this ability say that they can "see" the picture on the table even though you removed it, and they have to mentally "splash" or "shatter" the picture on the floor by "pushing" it over the table edge.
ETA: Apparently, calling it "photographic memory" is discouraged. The preferred term is "eidetic imagery."
A college paper on eidetic imagery, which reports the incidence between 2% and 15% of elementary age children.
