maybe one explanation for autistic people being gaslighted by neurotypicals

hehe just to put a spanner into the mix as to whether I truly have autists truly have  better memory..

it depends! of course  Memory and the Autistic Brain | The Neurodivergent Brain

I remember lots of stuff and forget lots of stuff. Given sleep is a problem, being sleep deprived messes up memory making.

Also bring stressed can help or hinder, depending on context.

understood Stuart333 there is so much complexity that it is difficult to generalise as you pointed out earlier.

My rabbit hole burrowing also took me into a tunnel of research from Cambridge UNi with prof Baron-Cohen et al from 2016 where some to my mind less than sturdy studies looked at autistic memory and found it to be deficient.

As you say simply being stressed puts a totally different spin on things for example with "fight or flight" highlighting visual memories and down playing social communication...

Yes, would be interesting to run the tests again with the NT controls experiencing the same level of stress as the autistics were....

Awesome! I am a written-visual learner. Journaling is like rem-sleep for me. If I write down events when they happen, and then look at what I've written... its committed to memory. Otherwise, most events in my life pass by like scenery through a car window. It has to be written though. Not sure why my mind holds so much better that way. 

I use a recorder now for many things, and whisper-speech-to-text (google it) convert them all to text notes every few days.

As a kid  in school I would memorize pages at a time.... memorize page 1, repeat it, memorize page 2, repeat 1, repeat 2, memorize page 3, repeat 1, repeat 2, repeat 3. Much like playing the word-chain games as a kid in the car, but with pages of text instead. And yes, if I got panic'd or bullied... poof... there goes the chain of pages in my head.

I'm really poor with names too.  having them written down for clients was my workaround and I still write names of people in meetings down as they introduce themselves (hehe and then can't read my handwriting another joy of autism...)

Realising this I learnt of a strategy where one takes a salient characteristic of the person and superimposes it on their name as a "hook" to remember it by.

The first time I tried it I spent a day with a client who had a runny nose.  His name was Mr Smith.

When under stress I said "goodbye Mr SNiff" I realised that the technique might not be one best for me...  :-)  The days of Sir, Madam et al are sorely missed by me...

I have a fantastic visual memory, terrible with names unless I see them writted down (visual), and my memory can be affected by sleep/stress/panic.

I was severly disappointed to get a C in a Maths exam (it didn't matter as I was only taking it as an extra module for fun), as I had a panic attack in the exam, and it was like in my mind I could see the text book but all the answers were erased -it went completely blank, and I couldn't remember anything after that.  The teacher must have appealled with my normal A standard work and got it bumped up to a B, but it still shook me to the core that I could blank like that and remember nothing.

I have a fantastic visual memory, terrible with names unless I see them writted down (visual), and my memory can be affected by sleep/stress/panic.

I was severly disappointed to get a C in a Maths exam (it didn't matter as I was only taking it as an extra module for fun), as I had a panic attack in the exam, and it was like in my mind I could see the text book but all the answers were erased -it went completely blank, and I couldn't remember anything after that.  The teacher must have appealled with my normal A standard work and got it bumped up to a B, but it still shook me to the core that I could blank like that and remember nothing.

Awesome! I am a written-visual learner. Journaling is like rem-sleep for me. If I write down events when they happen, and then look at what I've written... its committed to memory. Otherwise, most events in my life pass by like scenery through a car window. It has to be written though. Not sure why my mind holds so much better that way. 

I use a recorder now for many things, and whisper-speech-to-text (google it) convert them all to text notes every few days.

As a kid  in school I would memorize pages at a time.... memorize page 1, repeat it, memorize page 2, repeat 1, repeat 2, memorize page 3, repeat 1, repeat 2, repeat 3. Much like playing the word-chain games as a kid in the car, but with pages of text instead. And yes, if I got panic'd or bullied... poof... there goes the chain of pages in my head.

I'm really poor with names too.  having them written down for clients was my workaround and I still write names of people in meetings down as they introduce themselves (hehe and then can't read my handwriting another joy of autism...)

Realising this I learnt of a strategy where one takes a salient characteristic of the person and superimposes it on their name as a "hook" to remember it by.

The first time I tried it I spent a day with a client who had a runny nose.  His name was Mr Smith.

When under stress I said "goodbye Mr SNiff" I realised that the technique might not be one best for me...  :-)  The days of Sir, Madam et al are sorely missed by me...