Do Aspergers have good memories?

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How do you know - what evidence do you have?

My youngest brother remembered when he was born and my Mum thought he was joking until he described the hospital room in detail which is a room that he has ever been in since and only ever been in on the day that he was born.

I can remember back to being about a few weeks old but no further so I am kinda average?

When I first suspected I might be a High Functioning Autistic I tried to learn more on the Internet. I had many of the traits but it struck me as odd that I had a terrible memory but most of the descriptions said that people on the Autism Spectrum had terrific memories.

When the Psychologist gave me my diagnosis I asked about this. She seemed amused and explained that, while some Autistics have incredible memories, most have incredible memories for things that interest them--and terrible memories for things that do not interest them! That describes me.

I have a good autobiographical memory, where I can remember what year most things happened and what I did on most of my birthdays, etc. But I read somewhere that Asperger's makes it hard for people to remember autobiographical things and are better at remembering facts and stuff like that. That isn't true for me.

I still have memories from when I was an infant and toddler, so my long term memory is relatively good. Otherwise my memory is very selective. I can't remember a lot of concepts in math after a few weeks/months, but I still remember details and cheats for games I played when I was like, 8, and can memorize facts about animals and other things I like very easily. lol

My earliest memories are from around age 1. I have excellent long term autobiographical memory and for lots of random stuff too… particularly for quotes in movies and songs I haven’t listened to for years. It feels filed in there and I can access it all when I need it.

Sigh. It's almost lunchtime and I have trouble remembering breakfast.

I live very, very much in the present. I forget most things quickly. What I do remember is typically accessible via links of associations with other memories and therefore often not readily accessible on demand.

Depends on salience.

Most folks have very vivid encoding and therefore recall ("memory") when the subject is of intense interest (or terror).
In those cases, mechanisms of memory get a brief "hit" of those neurotransmitters critical to activating pathways in the encoding process.

So for example, folks with ADD do very well in subjects of interest to them.
It's just everything else is banal.

I recall past issues of teror or bad things that happened for years and years and years. Each time they come back (Often when I am hitting a time of anxiety) I can expolore them in detail and I can get more detail out of them but this does not help me forget. It helps me forgive but I want to forget...

I think if I didn't have serious executive function dysfunction I would have a fantastic memory. Baffles me how aspies have such good memories when most of our brains are working overtime most of the time.

It is at least in part a product of special interests.

Anything related to my special interests tends to repeat in my memory when it is interesting.

https://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2013/ ... pbell-hall

About your brother:

My memory goes back to like three years old, maybe 2 and half.

Nothing before I could walk, or talk.

duplicate post

Last edited by naturalplastic on 25 Jul 2021, 3:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I relate .

I can tell you how many casualties every country had in world war two. How many soldiers died. How many civilians died. And what proportion of the country's whole population that died.

But I cant remember the names of 99 percent of my coworkers.

similar here, and my first memories are a cluster about a family vacation to banff, three memories.

First one was sitting in a school bus they used to use in place of the gondola at Sunshine Village, and seeing graffiti carved into the back of the metal on the seat in front of me.

What is average? I remember anippets of information. I can remember a Western diesel coming through my local station and the last time when they were in service (Apart from a rare trip as a preservation special a few years ago) was when I was a year old. I did not take the locomotives name and number as I could not read or write, but the vision I had of the loco was such that years later when I learned which locomotives were which I found out it was a Western, and this is confirmed as I was in my pram, and my Mum says I was only in the pram for around 6 months as after that she had a pushchair.
I hated the pram. It was soo claustrophobic. I always wanted to see out and I couldn't while in the pram.
Another early vision I had was looking up into the sky from the rear window of a car and I was watching the wires that go across the road, and I even later found out through the pattern of the wires where I was and where I was going to. I was a baby at the time. The sort of age before I could sit up. I am talking with my Mum and it may have been one of my Grandads Renault 16's as in 1976 he had a Renault 15 with a Renault 17 1600cc engine which was a rare "One off" that Renauly made for him as he happened to work as a designer for them for a couple of years. He had that Renault 15 until 1990 when he replaced it with a Peugeot 309 diesel.
One of the Renault 16's he had was when they first came out and one company he worked for as a developments engineer (Designer), the boss had had a new gullwing Mercades SL and his boss reaconed it would leave my Grandads new car in a race. My Grandad was always tinkering with engines and cars and he accepted the challenge. The route was made to take advantage of a stretch of a few miles of road which had some very long straights inbetween two villages where they were to reach the other village, turn round and come back and a day and time was chosen where nothing else was expected to be on the road. Well the Renault not only was ahead but it left the Mercades standing which is not what was expected. That Renault 16 had bench seats. The next one had ordinary seats which is more likely to be the one in which I made that journey in.

Early memories are interesting. There was a village green by the side of the house and a petrol garage behind the green and the garage has sort of taken over the old green as its land. It never used to own it! It is now all tarmac for garage parking, but an early memory I have is of an old double decker bus that had broken down and had to be left on that little village green which by then was all fine dark gravel as a surface. I was about the age when I was first starting walking and I wanted to go on the bus to look at it, and as there was no one around and the garage was shut etc, my Dad conceeded and we went on the back of the bus with its open rear entrance and I crawled up the stairs with the help of my Dad so I could see the upstairs. It was the type of bus that had a single cab over one half of its engine. I remember the bus had wooden bargeboards mounted under the sides which were in between its wheels... A feature that has not been seen in bus design for years!
I also remember seeing an early Ford Cortina (Probably not that old in those days) with the circular rear lights divided into three equal segments. I was fascinated with that design and I have never seen anything like it as a design since. Back then there were a few going around and the odd one lasting into the early 1980's like that, and one earler local Cortina had the even earlier but less interesting (To me) rear light design which lasted into the early 1990's.
It is funny what one remembers as a kid!