Art of memory
The designation is not used with strict consistency. In some cases it refers broadly to what is otherwise known as the art of memory, the origins of which are related, according to tradition, in the story of Simonides of Ceos: and the collapsing banquet hall discussed above. For example, after relating the story of how Simonides relied on remembered seating arrangements to call to mind the faces of recently deceased guests, Steven M. Kosslyn remarks "[t]his insight led to the development of a technique the Greeks called the method of loci, which is a systematic way of improving one's memory by using imagery." Skoyles and Sagan indicate that "an ancient technique of memorization called Method of Loci, by which memories are referenced directly onto spatial maps" originated with the story of Simonides. Referring to mnemonic methods, Verlee Williams mentions, "One such strategy is the 'loci' method, which was developed by Simonides, a Greek poet of the fifth and sixth centuries BC" Loftus cites the foundation story of Simonides (more or less taken from Frances Yates) and describes some of the most basic aspects of the use of space in the art of memory. She states, "This particular mnemonic technique has come to be called the "method of loci". While place or position certainly figured prominently in ancient mnemonic techniques, no designation equivalent to "method of loci" was used exclusively to refer to mnemonic schemes relying upon space for organization.
Exceptional memory
Marvin Minsky has argued in his book, "The Society of Mind", that the reported cases of eidetic memory should be considered as "unfounded myth[s]". This view was supported by an experimental study conducted by psychologist Adriaan de Groot. The experiment was intended to investigate chess grandmasters' ability to memorize positions of chess pieces on a chessboard. When those chess experts were provided with arrangements that were inconsistent with a real chess game, their performance was about the same as non-experts. These results indicate that the eidetic ability of those chess grandmasters were not innate, but a learned strategy with certain types of information. Also Wilding and Valentine held a search for people claiming to have an eidetic or otherwise superior memory via public media. Out of the 31 people who called in only three actually had a significantly above-average memory—and none of those three had an eidetic memory.