Autism and Memory

I actually managed to recover repressed memories from early infancy.  

The irony is that these memories were so bad, that I both repressed them and managed to recover them when I was about thirteen years old.  When I suffered panic attacks.

What a fascinating topic, this is a four year old post but it came up under related posts over on the right of one of mine. 

Worth bringing back to the top as it helps me work out why my memory is well rather lacking in certain areas.

Some amazing abilities amongst these people.wish I had any kind of heightened ability with numbers,words,pictures,art or music, I don't seem to have anything other than good ability with my hands,understanding materials and how they can be used effectively and a different way of problem sorting.

I can assimilate with daisy girl about small traumatic memories with big chunks missing where there should be faces and other information,The memories I do have are full of minute detail not necessarily relevant,

The smell of crayons,dust from the chalk board floating in the sunlight across the classroom ,The mesmerising smell of red paint we used at school to colour the Christmas post boxes we had made from cardboard tubing,the glue used to stick down cotton wool to asimulate snow being white,sticky and smelt sickly sweet,

Really strong memories about tiny detail but hardly anything about everything else going on right then.

maybe PTSD plays a part? Most people smell freshly cut grass and memories flood in the mind, but maybe certain stressful moments to us are freeze framed for ever never to be forgot,some it may act as a trigger to cause more stress as memories overwhelm from the past.

Those tiny little fragments always there ready to overwhelm most unexpectedly.

Anyway nice post,nice people and some lovely user names,big hugs if your still here.

@Mason, that's what I have!  It's like a photographic memory and I visualise a page of writing and recall what it said by zooming in on the photo in my head.

I find memory to be a fascinating topic. I have a very visual memory, at school I would remember where things were on a page and when I though back to it, I would see the page in my head, the images only last a day or so though so it's not an ideal way to learn. I have managed to use it in addition to rote repetition in my mind in order to memorise things like the Tom Lehrer element song. But then thought I could use this visual mind thing to try and memorise things i want by using a known mnemonics method called the journey method and I memorised the first 100 digits of pi very quickly and that was over a year ago and I still remember the first 53 I must have rushed the images from then on because a few of them have disappeared. I also memorised the periodic table in order and know their chemical numbers using the same method.

Back to the original post, the down side to this means I do also re-experience things as though they're happening again and feel those emotions very vividly too. It causes a lot of stress and anxiety and wish i could turn it off. I always thought everyone else thought like this too, I remember going to a prayer meeting with a friend and I said I wouldn't be able to join in saying prayers because of talking in a group, and then explained that I don't always think in words, I often think in pictures and she found that bizarre. I never thought of it being unusual, but I don't think other people necessarily think like that because they can be so articulate about a topic so quickly, whereas it takes me a while to convert my thoughts into words. 

If I can refer back to my observations about young people spending time on the computer, I appreciate parents' concerns about their children having only virtual lives.

I think we have to be realistic about ASD - "normal" social interaction is hard to achieve - bashing kids to make them "normal" isn't the answer. Parents need to help their children find ways around this, like acting social roles, but recognise that they cannot make them normal.

I think many young people's lives are being spoiled through parents obsessing about their lack of a social life.

On the other hand there is a move afoot to recognise that encouraging young people with ASD to develop their aptitudes is a more productive way forward. 

So to get back to the thread, different memory structures are something that need to be developed. There's no reason why the majority memory structure has to be enforced, indeed differences are part of evolution.

And if children with ASD think and memorise differently, that's surely to be encouraged - not beaten out of them by parents obsessed with the notion that there's only one way of thinking.

I have a visual thought process, but I also have a verbal thought process.  I can manipulate images in my head with a narrative alongside.

I need to see physical pictures of things to help with explanations, especially with things like flat pack furniture!

I am rubbish at maths but score highly verbally.  I usually would have to read written instructions a few times and break them down to be able to understand them.  Less so with scientific material and barely, if at all, with stories (either fact or fiction).

I am interested in what Longman and True Colors have said about how their memory works.

I have an entirely non-language based thought process, visual, but also with music. Also I always think about many things simultaneously, and all the time. So I can be remembering things, working out a problem and arranging a piece of music at the same time (sorry if that seems a bit confused but it is very very hard to explain what goes on in my head using words), along with lots of other things, it's like a big mash up of pictures. I struggle to convert my thoughts into words because they aren't word-like in my head. I actually can't "see" words or numbers at all.

I had trouble at Uni because I have to convert all text based material into a form that will work in my mind. This meant I had to do a lot of work, but it paid off in the sense that I know my subjects inside out and got very high marks. Plus it helped that it was science based. And, I've found that it is good to have a different way to think about maths.

I think this is why things like PTSD stick so much with us.

Oh I'm only talking visual memory, not storing numbers or text. Being a field scientist I frequently have to record a lot of detailed measurements, some geology, landforms, sometimes buildings. I can make sense of my notes hours or even days later because I hold a detailed memory in three dimensions in my head. That is I can recall what I was looking at in great detail.

A can remember tables and diagrams. I had a notion it might help me at university, but I didn't take account of the need to explain and discuss as well as recall. But I did develop those skills as well.

Longman, what do you mean by storing memory in three-dimensions? I can't quite visualise what you mean.

Worth reading Daniel Tammet's "Born on a Blue Day" Hodder & Stoughton 2006 (ISBN 0 340 89974 3  this number will help a bookshop or library track it down).

He also has a website http://www.danieltammet.net/  and has a new book out "Thinking in Numbers"

We don't get over things well, so deeply felt experiences will tend to stick in the memory, and will continue to hurt disproprtionately.

But this memory capacity is important, and potentially a major compensation and asset if properly exercised and utilised. I think the big mistake about current treatment of children on the spectrum is to focus on cure, beating them up to make them conform to NT, rather than develop real potential.

So many parents complain on here about their children spending too much time on the computer. Well computer technology is going to be here for the foreeable and beyond. It is more than likely to form a significant part of their lives.

Rather than trying to stop it, parents ought to look at ways of developing it, by helping their children find applications for this enthusiasm with more practical application with an inevitable trade off between comfort zone and usefulness.

I know things can be hard for parents if not so computer literate or find it hard to take in the detail of what your kids are in to. But it might be worth investing in some tutorials by people with the appropriate expertise. 

But it is not just computing, I have a highly visual memory which helps me store information three-dimensionally and has enabled me to benefit in many ways from having an edge over NTs. Others may be more artistic, or good at languages.

The social communication, organisational and environmental aspects of this condition ain't fun, and it is a lonely one, but for goodness sake parents should try harder to look for positives. Anything that presents as a developable skill is something to make the best of.