please - I need some feedback on this subject -

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Oh I was going to start this exact same thread! I remember my first birthday quite clearly. And yes just like a little alien sent to study humans, I was always watching them.

and anyone out there who can only remember very small bits and pieces, fragments before about age 7 or 8, and only a few coherent memories before 10?

I have a few vivid sense impressions back til I was about 3, but very few memories of what I was feeling or thinking. In fact, I don't really remember how I felt about things a year ago - I only know what I think of them now. It seems my memories change quite drastically depending on my current feelings.

See, I see things like that, and it makes me think I must be closer to AS. My visual memory is there, even if somewhat unclear. And you DON'T need words to remember. If you did, I would remember very little. when I type this, for example, I think about the words ONLY to validate them! I am not thinking about what keys I have to type, doing motions through verbal commands, or self narating.

BTW IMAGES strengthen MY memories, and a number of memory courses say that.

- yes, same here - I think entirely in images / filmic scenes and 'sort of' diagrams - and then I have to put it into words to communicate - which is very time consuming to get accross what exactly I mean. poetry or prose on the other hand just flows out - I don't see poetry and prose as words though, well not in the same way. mmm.....

another thing that fascinates me is how anyone can actually think in words - that would have to make them the equivalent of a speed typist to keep up - does anyone here process information in words in their head?? Or can anyone describe how it's done ?. Whenever I hear or read Temple Grandin describing how she 'processes' information - well, it's more or less exactly like that.

Same here. At one time, I had near-total recall of my childhood experiences dating back to 1969, when I was 2 years old. I also watched people speak and tried in vain to mimic their actions while talking. I didn't really speak much until I was almost four, and that came when I read my Babar The Elephant book out loud to my mother. (She taught me to read and speak using phonics early on in my life). Since my late 30's and mild brain damage due to previously undiagnosed chronic anemia set in, my memory has fragmented and I now only recall a handful of incidents from the late 60's. I was three years old when I slipped out of the apartment and walked toward the swimming pool in the courtyard area where I lived at the time. I stepped off into the water and sank to the bottom of the pool and remember looking up with some curiosity as this woman's arm came down from above and latched on to my hair and pulled me up and out. I remember coughing a lot of water out of my chest then studying the woman as she leaned over me to see if I was okay. She wore a short green dress and her blonde hair was piled up high on her head (which I later learned was called a 'beehive' hairdo). I didn't realize until much later on that this woman saved my life. I just thought she had weird hair.

I remember certain things with crystal clarity while others are just a blur of confusion. I became aware of mortality at the age of four when this sicko babysitter I had showed me pictures she had taken while she was in med school. (She was attending med school at the time an babysitting me and my middle brother at the time for extra money). I don't remember any of the pictures except one, which showed a cadaver's open skull and the brain removed, sitting on a tray beside it. I KNEW immediately what I was looking at and I had mental shut-down within seconds of seeing the image. Everything immediately went black. I remember that I cried and slept for at least a week after that. Mom remembers the incident like this: "Yeah, she tried to show Jill what a brain looked like and Jill screamed and cried for an entire week." Mom found the incident curious, as did I much later on, but I was pissed off at both the babysitter for showing me the image and my Mom for not recognizing the trauma I'd been through. For Mom, it was like, "it was a brain. Big deal."

I remember being born.  It's all sensations.  Deep pressure on my face.  Feeling like I was falling.  My eyes stinging (from the silver nitrate drops).  Then I stared at a square-ish black outline shape, knowing that I never saw that shape before.  (maybe it was a picture frame or window frame?)

It's not like normal memory.  I can't recall it without actually feeling it again.  It will hit me like flashbacks.  Both times I was pregnant, I recalled and felt the memory more and more frequently as the pregnancies progressed.  My theory is that when I was born I had lots of pregnancy hormones in me from my mother through the placenta, and when once again my body was flooded with pregnancy hormones, they triggered the memory. 

This is one of the reasons that I did not allow either of my sons to be circumcised.  They say the baby won't remember.... I call it BS, of course they do. 

I also have a couple of memories of being carried around before I could walk, so before age one.  I remember a birthday party I attended at 18 months old in great detail.  I was sitting in my mom's lap.  I had on a party hat and the rubber band under my chin was infuriatingly uncomfortable but my mom wouldn't let me take it off.  It was a circus theme and there was a cardboard circus tent in the middle of the table with bold red and white stripes and I wanted desperately to play with it.  I was also chewing on a straw.  Then there was a flash of light, and I was confused and looked around for a long time trying to figure out where the flash of light came from.  Many years later, I found the photograph and thought, "Aha!  That's what the flash of light was!" 

Nope.


My earliest memories are from when I was 5... and I only have two of them, very vague (a fallen tree in Reigate after a hurricane, and a creepy picture in an upstairs room in a house in Edinburgh). I seem to recall having one from when I was.... 6 or 7, I think (football arguments in school).

My memory degrades very severely more than about 5 years back, and to be honest I don't remember much more than my present routine at all without thinking hard about it. Only really extreme memories (like having to give permission for Gawain [my only real friend since I was very young] to be put down on my 14th birthday) seem to linger sharply.
... If I look back, all I really remember are deaths. I just have sharp memories of all the deaths that have occurred around me, most of which without any specific date to them, but visual and emotional imprints. That and wondering why they died so much sooner than I did.... wondering when I would get to die too.

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I can remember really far back. I remember being in a diaper, and my Mom told me I was potty trained when I was about 22 months (just before I was 2 years). I also remember drinking out of my bottle and I'd take my finger and poke the nipple in and then cry if it didn't pop back out. I seem to have a really good long term memory, but my short term memory is horrible.

My earliest memories are far from pleasant, and it from around age 2. I was standing in the hall, where there was a chandelier that I was terrified of. My family lived in an old building condo at the time, where the hall in the unit was wide enough to have space for a chandelier. I was standing in the hall, looking up at the ceiling, with a look of pure terror in my eyes. I kept mumbling "chandelier" (or at least my best attempt at pronouncing that word) over and over, wondering why my parents weren't doing anything to remove me from the scary situation; their questions "sweetie, what's scaring you?" (albeit with good intentions) didn't comfort me one bit.

Have at it.(ask away)