Question I always wanted to ask

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Does anyone of you have some sort of memory loss or memory problems? I have problems with my memory. If you ask me where I was in a certain time or place I wouldn't be able to recall. I even forget what I eat sometimes. Say if I ate three waffles at breakfast I'll be able to tell you but if I have something different than what I always have I forget and have to question my self what I ate. Anyone have similar problems?

My short term memory is abysmal.

I will forget if I locked a door about 10 seconds after it happens. I'll forget what customers buy what drinks etc.

I'm starting to have a little trouble recalling vocabulary that I know I know perfectly well. It always comes to me eventually, usually after I stop thinking about it.

Yes, but I believe that's not especially an aspie trait. Hardly anyone appears to remember what het ate. However, I do think it might be more of a problem for aspies, for don't we want to know and control everything

For me, I store so much data in my head that I let go of anything I don't consider relevant. It's kind of an automatic thing for me now. I never remember what is put in front of me to eat unless it is something I particular like such as Thai food. I do find that I have to really concentrate to remember mundane things like paying bills. My husband used to endlessly drill this into me until they came up with automatic withdrawals.


And yet, I can remember old Cobol code from banking programs I looked at in 1984 and this is very handy since the banks all run on mainframes at the backend. I document banking systems and I know that no matter what the frontend looks like in the current world, at the backend these are the values, where they go, what their contingencies are, etc. I know when they are set to process and what edits that information will go through. I know what applications it will update and where in them it updates. It makes my job so easy because I can remember all of that.

Yeah, don't worry. This kind of stuff happens to everyone. And it may not have a ryhme or reason. Freud once wrote an ENTIRE BOOK on just this subject. But I guess some things the brain considers too mundane. Some aspect of it IS left and, if you try hard enough, and give yourself enough rest, you might remember it, but why bother.

And YEP, I see this happen ALL THE TIME to people from little kids to adults.(of ALL ages).

Just yesterday, I realized I forgot where I parked my car, I left it there 2 weeks ago. NORMALLY, I would search PHYSICALLY for it if I forgot. But the temperature was below 10F! OK, before my trip, I searched MENTALLY for my car. I thought I found it in a couple minutes. On the way back, an obviously NT person told me he knew where his truck(I told him about my story) was telling me how he KNEW where he parked his truck, and it was big and the profile was easy to see anyway. Well, my car was JUST where I thought! It was burried under 18" of snow and, with no traction, I needed some help. I got it from the driver of a vehicle that was in the midst of helping that guy find his truck!

Steve

Yap!! i also forget a lot of things and places.

I remember when i was younger and me and my brother and sister were watching TV. Sometimes there were some programs about places we already visited. they saw a town and they said it's name right away. I can tell you no one heard my voice: i didn't recognised the places and i never associated the name to the place.

now it happens a lot while driving: i purely forget some ways, even if i had been there sereval times.

I am continually forgetting words that I want to say. So I'm talking away and suddenly can't remember what the word is, so I duh duh a bit then say, "You know, that red thing ...", then the other person says the word I wanted to say. Is this old age?

I have a part-time job as a postman and today I asked a client's name for a document. A few seconds later I had to ask again, because I forgot . But then again, as postman you see a lot of names over all the day.
Or if I leave some thing somewhere, where I don't usually leave it, I can't find it anymore and I get nervous running fro an to looking for it.

I think this is a problem EVERYONE has... I don't rate what I had for breakfast as a high priority to take note of it. I also lose my keys or cell phone. I especially forget to charge that thing.

What worries me is that I forget things that I considered important at one time or another. I have forgotten how to read and write in Japanese. Actually, I've forgotten most of my Japanese. I was obsessed with Japan, Japanese language and culture for about 3 years but now I can't remember.

yup

Whenever my mom tells me I should feed the cats and then doesn't remind me the moment they ought to be fed, I'll have forgotten all about feeding the cats. Of course, I like my cats and wouldn't want them to starve, but I can't remember something as trivial as feeding them for more than a few seconds.

I can't manage to connect events, which I remember in great detail, with days of the week or with any time measurement for that matter. I don't even remember what I did in the beginning of this week just by trying to remember the name of the day or the date.
I'll have to remember a different way: that of sequence of events or sequence of information. Works really good, but it takes a looooong time compared with "usual" ways of remembering.

I suppose above users are right - everybody has this problem. Some less, some worse. Problematic, but mostly only extremely funny, are the situations in which you forget to out your shoes on when going outside.


Edit: From what I read, autistic brain does tend to work on a single canal (one thing at a time). So, maybe that's why we may forget and remember more at the same time, depending on what is singled out of all stimuli. We do remember, but forget temporary because of stress, extremely intense occupation and meltdowns like NTs; but we may save more, and also are able to access more. Maybe a Savant is the extreme example then. Our "working memory" however seems to be way more limited than that of NTs, because of the stimuli we can't shut out and other things I really don't know, so we forget all kinds of stuff and look really stupid to others and ourselves, as we have too little "work memory" not occupied to manage remembering, but we are going to remember later, once our brain is not overworking itself.

The thing is, I think, the more thoughts and emotions are connected to an event, the better people are able to remember a memory. Breakfast and things we don't recognise as important may be somewhere in our memory, if it is not deleted because of unimportance and lack of space for really important information, but since we don't have a very emotional connection or any direct connection (like being in the same situation) with the event, we can't recall it.

My memory doesn't work good with remembering source-addresses

Important notice!! I have no idea through, whether anything I said above is reasonable or just plain wrong, but I'd like to know.

Well, I actually remember a time when I wondered what forgetting was like, so I know I had a VERY good memory back then. That was before I was 8, and I believe before I was 7, but I DO know I was over 5!

I ALSO remember when if I got the first part of something, the rest just came back QUICK, and in one piece! It was like I was this HUGE computer with all the storage to boot! Well, TODAY, I feel like a little dinky* computer that has a kind of lousy connection to that HUGE computer. Everything is still there, it just comes in pieces, and takes longer. THAT is why I had to search MENTALLY for my car. That HUGE computer knew it was there all along, but I only had access to the dinky one.

"Scientists" are now saying, at least last I heard, that the memory DOESN'T degrade, but that the structure becomes less clear because of new use, etc... Well, I know they are at least PARTIALLY wrong, but I think there is some truth in their claims.

Steve

* BTW Dinky is slang for TINY, and gves the idea of inefficiency or being toy like.

Oh, Steve that sounds so familiar. Do you have the sensation of "searching" while you do that kind of thinking? I even get mental pictures of, oh call it scanning sectors, and looking for arcane landmarks in the database ... too weird.

Yeah, I can remember song lyrics and facts about cars and trains, and I'm good at linking up little trivial facts and details which seem unrelated but aren't.

But I'm hopeless at remembering things which are considered important - names, birthdays, what people look like, when things happened, stuff I've said, places I've been. The memories exist but in a disjointed way. It takes me a long time to become familiar with people and places.

It worries me that if I were implicated in a robbery I'd end up being the no.1 suspect, because I wouldn't be able to remember what the criminals looked like, or indeed what I had been doing there in the first place!

I can remember a lot of things, like dates and hours of trivial moments that happened years ago, numbers, things (objects, plants, animals) I see everyday, dialogues, birthdates, songs with music and lyrics, what clothes and accesories wore a person days ago, things about my obsessions . . .

But my problem is recognizing people. I can't remember the face or name of people I meet. When I meet someone, I remember the clothes he/she was wearing and what she/he was doing, butI forget his/her face and name; if I see this person next day (in some cases I forget people in less than a hour) I say "Sorry, but who are you?". If that person was wearing glasses the day I met him/her, and next day he/she is not wearing glasses, it's hard for me knowing if the person is the same.