Anybody else get this memory problem?

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I sometimes do this, but it's more to explore alternate scenarios than to simply re-experience it. It's a lot more pronounced if it was a stressful social situation. When a guy made fun of me for ignoring him a few weeks back, that scene went over and over and over in my head as I contemplated all of the things I could have said and ways I could have handled the situation differently.

If a situation was particularly wonderful, I may do this as well. I also pre-talk and post-talk conversations I intent to / just had.

This wonders me what occurs to an Aspie or Autie when he zones out. When I am zoning out, I am going into hyper focus, where I tune out everything around me and I am concentrating on something inside my head, but my experience inside is not any kind of blank mind. But I have experienced something that I guess could be called that, on rare occasions when I am coming out of hyper focus. It seems to occur most often when I have been hyper focusing while driving. I have a very competent autopilot that take over the controls of the car during those times, but on rare occasions as I am coming out, I suddenly realize that I don't know where I am or where I am going, or why. Its as if my working memory has been wiped clean, and I have to quickly look around for land marks to figure out where I am, and which direction I am traveling. When this happens while I'm out on a road I have never traveled before, I might have to drive for two or three minutes before I come upon a road sign that tells me what highway I am driving on. Usually I recall from long term memory what I am doing there before I have to wait that long.

You make it sound like it's something you choose to do. I don't know. With pre and post talk it is sometimes something I choose, but most of the time these things seem to just occur by themselves for me.

Also I have noticed that I recall the environment that was around me when I reprocessed something, more than what was around me when I first heard or experienced the thoughts. That is why I speculate that it is in reprocessing that the memories get moved from sequential memory to global memory. But I don't really know, and I haven't stumbled upon any research on the subject.

Last edited by willmark on 21 Jul 2009, 8:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think I can experience raw sound like this, but I can also tune it out when it's noise. I suspect that's why I don't get sensory overload. Then again, I suspect that's also why I don't like startling noises, for my default processing state is "raw" and it takes me a moment to apply the filter. Startling noises used to completely freak me out as a kid.

Also, the way I described learning a tune is more of the intentional, manual way I can learn tunes. It's far more common for me to learn tunes automatically. I have a tendency to learn all of the tunes on a particular album all at once, but this occurs just by listening to the album a number of times. I don't have to "sit down and learn" them. I can then start one of these tunes at a session and play it perfectly, even though I have never played it before.


This is definitely true. I have undoubtedly "specialized" in sound processing. I still get the feeling that my others senses are a bit heightened, though, particularly smell and possibly vision (though my physical vision is bad, my cognition is better).

I have been contemplating this statement. Either I don't experience this at all, or I don't know how you mean it. Do you mean when you are trying to learn songs in different genres? I guess I am confused. I love some music where the arranger intentionally mixes genres together.

I was originally going to say, "genres such as Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, Quebecois, American old-time, Cajun, etc." but I thought I would lose everyone. So now that you've prodded me, you're going to get the Aspergian rant.

The phrases in each style of music are different. In Scottish / Cape Breton music, for instance, there are a ton more arpeggios (sequences of notes formed by combining triads, if that makes sense) than in a genre such as Irish music. So you have to learn a different set of building blocks. Some of them are shared across genres, but some of them are unique. And they present themselves in different combinations. Some are acceptable combinations, and others are not, and it varies by genre. I can't explicitly tell you which are acceptable and which are not, but I know it when I hear it.

A more difficult aspect to learn, though, is the styling. Even if the building blocks are relatively similar, the styling is completely different. Different bowing techniques, different bow weight, different ornaments with the left hand, difference placements of those ornaments... it all sort of works together in harmony.

To compound this issue, there are a whole bunch of "crossover" tunes, which are tunes found in more than one genre but are obviously related in origin. Lord MacDonald's is a great example of this phenomenon. I believe it was originally a Scottish tune, and it's played certain way if you're playing it Scottish or Cape Breton style (Cape Breton is a direct offshoot of "old" Scottish, but that's a different story altogether). The Irish version is nearly the same notes, but it's much smoother overall. The old-time version is called "Leather Britches" and it's almost unrecognizable as Lord MacDonald's, but when you sit down and think about it, it's quite obviously the same tune in origin.

So "genre switching" is incredibly difficult, and most don't even try. It takes years to learn how to sound "authentic" in a particular genre and just like a hack who picked up sheet music and started reading it. Unfortunately, many classical musicians mistakenly believe that's all there is to folk music. I have to chuckle when I see one of them think it's easy, only to discover that when they plow into it how hard it really is. If you want to freak out a classical musician, just tell them that they are going to completely learn the tune by ear.

Anyways, I'm sure I've ranted on long enough about this.

Yes I get this sometimes. It seems to have started happening as I approached puberty, when the schoolwork was at its most challenging. It was as if the shutdowns I was experiencing during classes were starting to invade my private life......I'd try to think my way through a problem, and whether or not it was anything to do with school, suddenly all the thoughts would go "pop!" and there would be nothing there. It was quite scary when it was happening a lot, and I used to think I might have brain damage.

Once I'd got away from all those stupid lessons and courses, I started focussing purely on the things that interested me, and I went through a phase where I wasn't getting that problem at all. These days there's more pressure for me to fathom stuff I have no great interest in, and occasionally it comes back - it also strikes when I'm flogging my intellect on something I'm not directly interested in but want to do because it relates to something I want - like writing a complex computer program that bores me but will make the next step in my special interests easier - when it strikes, I've learned to just relax and then try again to pick up the "dropped stitches" - and it always seems to come back eventually, though in really difficult cases it might take a few attempts. Some stuff really is hard to fathom of course, and some problems can remain nebulous for years, but I've learned not to worry, and to just keep calmly returning to the matter, until eventually I can make coherent statements about it. It's often very helpful to write my thoughts down and read them back to myself.

Classical musicians are accustomed to having the score in front of them. I am accustomed to learning music from a score, but I don't expect learning to play by ear to be any problem, though I don't consider myself to exactly be a classically trained musician, or at least I don't play anything with professional expertise.

I do experience something kind of like that a lot, where I go into another room to do something and upon arriving I discover that I have forgotten why I went there. In that situation, I have discovered that if I return to the room I was in when I thought of the thing that needed doing, I often recall what I went in the other room to accomplish. I sometimes have the same problem on my computer. I decide I need to load a particular program to run some needed task, but by the time the program loads and is ready for me to start working, I discover I have forgotten what I was going to accomplish there. That is a very common experience for me at work.

Yes. Usually when that starts to happen I have to put the CD down for a while and listen to a different one.

What I often don't remember is the number of times a melody repeats when it's the exact same melody but possibly different lyrics. When I get songs stuck in my head usually it's a single verse going on an infinite loop. I do tend to remember the transition that comes after a verse when there's a change.

I put a CD down when it gets to where it is no longer stimulating, which for some pieces might be several days later. When music gets stuck in my head I don't experience it as repetitions with different texts. And most of the time, when music gets stuck in my head it is some instrumental piece, or instrumental version of the piece. It's usually a nonverbal experience. But when I do experience something with words, I experience it like a long string with no repitions.

Someitme I experience the opposite

Same here. I can't remember verses and words, but the exact notes with harmonies are clear as day.

That seems to be a known feature of AS:

"The difficulties they experience are in......remembering knowledge and skills away from the.....setting."
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt103585.html
And I get that problem in spades. Or, as I used to put it, when I leave a room, my memory doesn't come with me. Another part of the cause in my case might be that my mind is rarely still, so by the time I'm in the new room, my thoughts are 1000 miles away from the reason I entered the room. Something to do with the difference between short-term memory and "working memory" - the latter is the ability to remember when unrelated mental activity has occurred in the interim period...it's known to be worse than simple short-term memory, for everybody, but for Aspies I suspect it's a lot worse.

Possibly your example of losing the memory while a program loads is one in which the setting hasn't changed (you're still at the same computer), so maybe in that case it's more that your working memory is letting you down. Do you typically have unrelated thoughts while you're waiting?

The amnesia arising from a change of setting reminds me of some advice for people who want to remember their dreams - that when they first wake, they should not move, or even open their eyes, until they've attempted the recall. Quite why an Aspie's memory of a waking thought or experience should have the same sensitivity to a change of setting as a neurotypical's memorty of a dream, I don't know. It would be interesting to find out if Aspie mental activity is more dream-like in other ways.

I've also noticed that some Eastern meditation paths recommend the stilling of the mind as a great aid to mental performance. Presumably when the mind avoids interfering thoughts, working memory is no longer required. Of course multi-tasking is then out of the question, which could mean that not as much gets done in a given time, but if the amnesia effect is abolished by the technique, perhaps that in itself is worth more - how efficient is multi-tasking if it keeps making us lose the plot?

A few comments.
1. I wonder if other mental types, for lack of a better term, experience this. For instance many older people call this having a "Senior Moment", though I swear I have been experiencing this much longer than the last few years. Also for instance Aspies are not the only group that experience sensory sensitives. This is also a common attribute of people who are the inverse of NLD, that no one has bothered to create a convenient acronym for yet, that I am aware of. I am wondering if another difference might be the amount of anxiety that Aspies and Auties experience in response to those sensitivities.
2. When I change to another program on my computer, though I am still physically sitting in the same place, still mentally I have moved into another environment. To me, this is still a type of moving, even though I have not left my chair. And I can go back to the program I was in when I thought of this need, and it usually causes me to recall why I needed to load the new program.
3. Something about me that seems to be different from most Aspies is I get almost nothing accomplished when I strive to not multi-task. My mind gets side tracked so badly. It's easier for me to accomplish two things at the same time, than only one, unless I go into hyper focus, which can be lead to great embarrassment if that happens at work, and great frustration if I go there in front of my wife.
4. I have very much a holistic learning style. I am the type that is just lost until I get the whole picture loaded, and then something clicks, and my mind runs circles around everyone else, but until I get there I am feeling like a perfect dunce. I need the structure of the overview to hang my accumulated details on. But people who think in wholes are supposed to not be good with detail. I seem to have a foot in both worlds.

I just had a random memory from my high school years. I was attending a football game. Everyone else was all excited about the plays of the two teams, but not me. I noticed this beetle making his way across the field, and suddenly I was focused on this little bug crossing the field under feet of the football players, and the events of the game didn't matter any more. And I watched as these huge feet stamped all around the beetle who seemed blissfully unaware of the danger that was all around him, but somehow he managed to reach the other side of the field without getting himself squished.

I guess I need to go research the difference in working memory and short term memory. I now speculate that imagination resides in working memory, and things imagined there get stored in long term memory. My working memory must be huge to accomplish what Leslie Sword claims Visual Spacial thinkers must accomplish to translate their thoughts to words. Though I feel like my working memory gets subdivided into tasks, and memories that are associated with a task get unloaded from working memory along with the task. Or maybe it makes more sense that my working memory is smaller than usual, and my mind is doing memory swapping in much the same manner as computers did before memory became much cheaper to manufacture.

As for having unrelated thoughts in my mind while I am working, I always have thoughts related to several different subjects going at the same time, so yes I do. They are unrelated to work, but related to something else. They are not just random thoughts perse.

What exactly do you mean by the "inverse of NLD"? The ability to have special skills in the areas where others have deficiency?


So you have a tendency to like to juggle a lot of things at once, and when you concentrate on one, you still have that tendency? That sounds ADHD-ish, though I'm no expert in that area.


I would just call this "normal learning style."


That sounds very Aspie-ish. You noticed some particular detail in the landscape that was not really apparent to anyone else and you focused on it.