Special (Aspie) Skills

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Yep, but the thought of going on national TV scares the jeebies outta me, so I should start with local trivia comps and work my way up from there - good idea, my friend and I shall look into it.

...and yeah, money will jolt anybody's memory. lol

Yeah, it'd scare me too, but you can do it
Good luck

Some of my own talents seem to be a little backwards compared to what seems to be "common" things in most autistics.

Firstly my memory is bloody horrible. Okay, that's not a talent, but it's still an important trait that I have to keep in mind constantly. I space out easily and can forget what I'm doing while I'm doing it. Or I might do something like walk into the kitchen to get food, and then blank out for a moment, followed by not having the foggiest clue as to why I am in there. Always been like this, very annoying... it was particularly bad back in highschool and before.

As far as the actual useful talents go, I have a few.

Firstly, I am fast. Not physically... cant run worth a crap... but I react stupidly fast and can process entire situations in the split second that it takes for me to react.

Second, I am very good at prediction, as I'll often know that something is about to happen just before it does. As a rule, this is almost always accurate, so I've learned to listen to it. How it works, I havent the foggiest idea... I'm sure there's some complicated explanation filled with technical terms that I wouldnt understand. Dont really care how it (or any of this stuff) works, actually.

Third, I can track and process a huge number of objects at once. My main hobby is gaming, and this helps a ton with that. I dunno if anyone here knows what a "bullet-hell shooter" is, but it's a favorite genre of mine, and the challenge of it comes from the fact that there's usually a bazillion seperate moving "bullets" on screen at once, all flowing in complicated patterns and coming from many different sources at the same time. There's seriously *alot* of them. A number like, 30-40 at once is on the low end. I can track all of them at once, which is why I tend to be very good at that type of game, so long as I dont get overly excited and crash into something. It's a practical ability in other situations too, such as when driving. Typically, nothing surprises me when driving, as I've already registered and am following/processing the movements of every nearby car and any potential objects/things that could conceivably be some sort of threat.

The disadvantage of that one is that it's automatic, making me utterly incapable of actually "focusing" on just one thing at a time.


Also abnormally coordinated. I've no idea if that one counts as a trait specifically gotten from autism or not.

It's notable though that I have PDD-NOS, not aspergers.


There's a couple of other traits, but I cant remember what they are at the moment.

Interestingly enough, when I took right/left brain tests in the past I've always scored right down the middle. I'm perfectly at home doing math/engineering/problem solving/science, or being creative & artistic here and there. I've created some "engineered, functional, art" in the past, fusing all of the above.

I, too, have visual thinking. I find it quite advantageous for some things like problem solving/design etc. Over my career I've built everything from spreadsheets to warehouses and done everything in between. Graphics design, drafting, sales, bar tending.. you name it.

I'm fortunate enough to have studied business & industrial engineering concepts at a very young age, graduating from a technical school of business at age 19. I've been able to apply subsets of what I've learned to everything I've done since. (I'm 32) I can pretty much do anything.. as I only need two things to do anything: The resources & the process. Give me those and I'll get the job done, on spec, hopefully on time & budget, too. Ha!

But yeah, I think I can credit both nature and nurture for my ability to adapt, learn, and do pretty much anything I need to in the moment. Nature, of course my ASD brain, and nurture - my education & experiences.

edit: I also have a great long term memory for all kinds of things. But much more fun than that, rather than say I have a photographic memory.. I like to say I have a pornographic memory - which comes in handy replaying the hottest hookups of my life in my mind.

Maybe my memory, possibly eidetic memory, but it's definitely not perfect as memory is always subject to alteration. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to studying and I mostly just cram. And there isn't really a rhyme or reason to it either I just basely memorize it, no real organization process that I go through. I picture it looking like a giant trash heap, but I know exactly where everything in said heap is instantly. I still get A's and B's even in college, which I remember being told repeatably wouldn't happen . Does that make me gifted or special? No, if anything it just evens the playing field to make up for all the other qualities I lack.

Also it's probably related to the first thing, but I get really good at playing video games really fast. I usually start off as utter crap, but I quickly get wicked good at most games. My friends have noticed it, I'll start off timid and such and next thing they know I'm kicking their asses. I like to refer to it as reaching critical mass.

Yeah, idk what to think.

I had a Physiatry intern and I could hand her a 30+ page file and 1 min later she could quote the entire file....tell you what page and line number the quote was from......literally perfect recall. She claimed to be able to recall every file she had ever read....i tried to trick her and failed.

Hired a lawyer....he flipped through(right in front of me) about 60 pages that I handed him when we first met. He knew every detail in it. Over time he would quote conversations that we had from months earlier...verbatim. He didnt trust court reporters and so after court he would transcribe everything from memory and then compare.

Dr. John von Neumann (one of the greatest scientist ever) was famous for being able to recite any thing he'd ever read perfectly.

i could go on...

anyway i'm not trying to give you a hard time i'm just saying that i'm dubious for now.

I hope you enjoy Med. are you going to do the MD/PhD route?

Haha, yeah memory is one of things I actually want to research.

I can understand being doubtful though because I am about some of the research out there as well. I did end up finding a couple books mentioning the loss during adolescence/puberty though, so if you're still interested, I can PM you a list.

Those people sound pretty interesting. I definitely believe there are people out there with exceptional memories, for example, people with hyperthymesia. It's pretty interesting; that's why I was asking you if anyone ever mentioned the hypothesized link with OCD. Eidetic memories are (seemingly) supposed to be more about actual images (and not words though). Children are said to have perfect (or near perfect) accuracy for a specific time after seeing an image (because they can "scan" the image mentally I think?), but it fades soon after (and they can't necessarily be retrieved later). I personally don't feel like eidetic memories have really been "defined" well enough though, but maybe that's just me? More research really needs to be done into that area and into people like you mentioned. There is one lady you might want to look up, actually - Elizabeth Stromeyer. Her husband studied her memory, but his findings are kind of controversial.

Maybe I used to be able to do it better when I was a kid, I don't know.. but I am able to recall images from memory & "scan" them - looking at them in my mind, visually perceiving them as if I were seeing the same things again in real life - and make observations. But this doesn't happen with everything all the time. I'm not sure if it's random or if there are triggers for it.

One recent one that comes to mind was when I was sorting out a food order at work and a manager grabbed a couple dishes to hand off to a server run to a table and told them the seat numbers for each dish - I interjected and told them the correct seat numbers. I knew I was correct even though the printed paper bill was 10 feet away in another room, because I could "see" the paper bill in my mind just as I had looked at it moments before and was able to read the correct seat numbers from the image of the bill that flashed into my mind.

I can do something similar to that too, but I personally don't consider mine eidetic because I don't believe I fit the other criteria:
"According to the criteria for differentiating eidetic images from afterimages, eidetic images should occur even when saccadic eye movements are made during exposure to the stimulus; it should be possible to make saccadic eye movements while one is reporting the image without the image also moving; the image should last long, and it should be positive. The criteria for differentiating eidetic images from nonvisual memorial representations include: reports of seeing an image projected onto a surface in space, the consistent use of present tense when reporting images as opposed to past tense when reporting from nonvisual memory, and the ability to superimpose two images and report the composite image."

When I picture images, I see them anywhere. It sounds like you do as well? It's like I'm seeing into my head because I'm not staring at an easel or scanning the image with the way these children have done. (Because I picture it and scan it only in my mind.) And I can superimpose simple images, but not complex ones. Also, my "images" last longer than eidetic ones are said to as well. That seems to be what everyone on here is reporting, I think? I've had many people tell me they can do the same thing, so I've come to believe the ability is much more common than previously believed. I wish there was an accurate word for this ability, but I'm not aware of any. (Another ability that goes along with it that my mother and I have always had is the ability to (randomly) picture words that people speak. If I hear the word "cat," for example, I'll picture a cat. I believe this is pretty common too.)

The reason researchers have said a truly photographic memory doesn't exist is because no one has shown to have this ability perfectly with all memories (like as you mentioned, you're not sure if your ability is random or if there's a trigger and a lot of people, like myself, can somewhat control the ability, but can't picture every memory we've experienced - only certain ones). The people that come closest to having that ability have (as I mentioned before) hyperthymesia, but their memories are generally associated with autobiographical memories, though they do tend to remember less important details (like what the weather was like). I find it all very interesting and surprising how so little is known about these abilities.

@Jezebel

yes PM pls
thanks

My special Autistic skill? Well.... besides being Autistic, I am AD tripleHD. This made sitting at a desk in school nearly intolerable. I wasn't allowed to get up and walk around, tap my pencil, shake my leg, nothing. So, to keep from imploding, I practiced body isolation. Because of this, now, 50 years older, with a double mastectomy and [basically] reconstruction, I can STILL flex my pectoral muscles so well that Arnold Scharzenegger would be envious. I can dance my mounds [used to be breasts] to any music. My chest is apparently much more coordinated than my 2 left feet.