Until recently, I didn't even realize that I thought any differently than others. Like many of the people that posted before me, I thought everyone had a visual mememory. The other day I was at a friend's house looking at some stuff he wanted to show me online. My friend clicked off the web page before I was through reading it (I was reading outloud). I just held the image of the page in my mind and continued to read until I was done. I didn't think anything about it until my friend commented on it. He couldn't understand how I had memorized it all, and when I told him I hadn't I was just reading it, he was amazed. I do not have the ability to flip through pages of information as some people do, but I can keep a visual image of a part of a page in my memery and pull it up later. The best way that I can explian it is like looking at a picture of text that is too small to read, your mind registers that there is a text box but you can't read it because it is too small. If I look at a whole page in a text book, I can bring up a visual image in my mind of the page complete with pictures, captions, text, but I will probably only be able to read back the captions becuase they will appear as words where the text will only appear as a text block, sort of like if a friend held up the book from across the room. If I focus on a specific part of the text and visually blow that part up, than I can read it which is what I did when I was reading the computer screen. I did not save a mental picture of the whole screen just the part I needed to see.

All of my memories are visual- detail colored images- going back to when I was a toddler. I can also look at the room I am in, close my eyes and see an almost exact picture of that room. I can describe in detail where everything in the room is and what color, shape, or size it is. Later, I can reacall the same image but it will not be as clear as if I just shut my eyes. I can also move objects around in space. I can form an image of the room and then shift the image to show what it would look like from different perspectives. I can do the same with any 3d object. It reminds me of a car on one of those turn tables at a dealership. I form the image in my mind from a memory and then can spin it around and see it from any side or angle. This was really useful when I took a drafting class in school. I can also play back whole movies scene by scene in my head only minus the audio. My coworkers will catch me staring off into space at work or say something to me and I won't hear them becuase I can get so cuaght up in rewatching a movie or tv show that I do not notice anything else. Besides being able to recall images I have seen before. I can also create new images in my mind. I am especially good at writing in my mind. It is kind of hard to explian, but if I think about the letter a I can form an image of the letter in my mind. Usually it appears in my handwriting but i can change the font if I want to. It is like an invisible hand is writing across a blackborad. For some reason the letters are in white on black, but I think if I tried I could make them appear in colors. Also, I do not see an image with my eyes open that then fades shortly later. I see a very close aproximate to a photograph of what I just viewed when I close my eyes, and can hold the image for as long as I need it. I can even pull the image back up a week or a year later, depending. What I see is not projected out in front of me. It is in my mind. If my eyes are closed, i see the image instead of the black of the back of my eyelids. I only ever see black when my eyes are closed if I focus really hard on seeing black. It is really hard for me to clear my mind of images to just see my eyelids. Sometimes impossible. When my eyes are open, it is almost like I am looking backward into my head. I can see what is in front of me and what is behind me (the visual mental image) at the same time whichever i focus on is the one in the clearer focus, and I can switch between the two easily.

I do not know what kind of memory I have -eiditic or visual or something else. It doesn't really sound exactly like what I have read about eidictic, but it seems like more than just visual memory so... I would love to know what others think, and if there are others who can do the things I have described.

Also, I don't really know if it matters, but I am a 23 year old student. I have abovde average artistic skills probably becuase I can visualize so well. My IQ is 120 something, I do not remember exactly, and the test I took was a real IQ test. (not one of the online ones. In case anyone is wondering you cannot get an accurate iq test online. The real test is a complictaed long multipart test that has to be administered by a real person and comes complete with about twenty pages of results. They are not even allowed to just give you a number.) I also have a visual proccessing problem that I was not diagnosed with until I was in highschool. I do not really understand it exactly. I just know that if it takes you 20 minutes to read something, it will take me 40 minutes. It has something to do with there being a delay between when my eyes see a word and when my brain registers the word.

I would love to know if anyone has any ideas about the visual images I can see.