more, Wagenaar had no way to control for talking or thinking about the events
later on; consequently, many of these events were likely recycled many times
through his cognitive systems. Also, he was often able to make plausible
guesses about what happened. For example, given the cue ‘‘I went to a church
in Milano’’ he may have been able to guess the approximate date by just re-
membering that his trip to Italy took place during the first two weeks of Sep-
tember in 1983. Finally, Wagenaar had no ‘‘foils’’ —events that could plausibly
have happened to him but did not—to see if he could accurately discriminate
between real events and foils. In fact, research demonstrates that people have a
hard time distinguishing between actually experienced events and plausible
foils in their recollections about important autobiographical experiences (Bar-
clay & Wellman, 1986).
In short, research on autobiographical memory does not prove that we have
accurate and detailed memory for nearly all of our experiences. It suggests that
we can remember, or at least infer, some of the details of our most distinctive
experiences.
‘‘Photographic’’ Memory? But what about individuals who seem to have some-
thing akin to a photographic or videotape memory in which all experiences
are accurately remembered? Wouldn’t the existence of these people contradict
the constructionist approach to memory? Incidentally, I do not intend for the
notion of photographic memory to imply that the individual has only an espe-
cially good memory for visual information. Instead, ‘‘photographic’’ is meant to
be a metaphor for extraordinary memory for all kinds of information.
A few extensive investigations of such rarely encountered individuals have
been carried out. Probably the best-known memory expert was S. V. Shere-
shevskii, usually referred to asS. Sgrew up around the turn of the century in
Latvia and was a Moscow newspaper reporter when his editor noticed his
exceptional memory. The editor recommended thatShave his memory evalu-
ated at the local university; there he met Aleksandr Luria, a great Russian
psychologist.
Luria studiedSover a period of about 30 years (Luria, 1968). Luria verified
thatS’s memory was quite extraordinary. For example,Swas able to repeat
back a series of 70 randomly selected numbers in order after hearing them only
once. As another example, he was able to recall lists of arbitrary and randomly
ordered words 15 years after Luria presented the words to him.Sclaimed that
he formed vivid and detailed images of every stimulus he was asked to remem-
ber and often associated the images with images of familiar locations, like Gorky
Street in Moscow. He would later retrieve the words from memory by taking a
mental ‘‘walk,’’ noticing the images associated with the landmarks. Thismne-
monic technique(i.e., a strategy for memorizing) is called themethod of loci,and
can be used effectively by anyone trying to memorize a list of stimuli (Gro-
ninger, 1971). Techniques like the method of loci improve memory for several
reasons, one of which is that they help make information more distinctive.
Smade use of other mnemonic techniques, as well. He seemed to have the
exceedingly rare ability, known assynesthesia, to conjure up vivid images of
light, color, taste, and touch in association with almost any sound. These images
also helped him remember new information. For a time,Sfound work as a
326 R. Kim Guenther