What is Autism Speaks?

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Good on you. I so wish there was a forum dedicated to our gifts and successes. It could be so important to younger people coming on. I'm an oldie, yet when I was young, it was a couple of role model oldies who had achieved and whom I liked, who planted the novel idea in me that maybe I could do that too... and without that inspiration, perhaps I would never have tried. So lets think about this.. Alex? You on for that? You could be role model number one.

Could someone send this to Alex somehow? Mods?

The memory advantages have nothing to do with what you did when you were three years old, I didn't give anything specific, I just said generally. It's really not about you, you are an individual. Scientists have found autistic people do better on many different cognitive. I

Anyway, with emotional I was referring to you whining about all the horrible things that have happened in your life, not problems with working memory.

I didn't say anything horrible has happened in my life. Nor did I say what I did at 3 years old. My point is my long term memory may be very detailed, but that has no practical use whatsoever. My short term working memory is absolutely awful and it causes a lot of problems each and every day of my life. It's not just me, you can see in threads about memory that most of us have problems with our working memory while having really great long term. This one is very recent:

viewtopic.php?t=293847

There are plenty more threads on WP about memories, and there are also studies on it. What I'm saying is not unique to me, far from it.

What I was asking is what use is having very good long term memory? Why is having great long term but bad short term an advantage?

We recall and retrieve learning held in long-term memory storage all the time. You ask what use it is? Humans could not function as humans without it. We store our vocabulary there, and syntax and knowledge of how to put words, meaning and grammar together in a cohesive whole; we store everything we have [b]ever [/b]learned in long term memory, whether it is dance steps, table manners or quantum physics. I just don't get where you come from at all, iliketrees, it's a mystery to me.

I'm not doubting it being useful. But it being incredibly detailed going back so far, what use is that? I'd rather trade in some of my long term to get some more working memory. I've got such an uneven distribution and I don't see how that is supposedly an advantage.

It's NOT about how far it goes back, it's about all the details along the way. The can be helpful in some many different things. Look at all the different things autistic people are good back. Memory is just the cognitive generalization.

So you think a really unbalanced memory is more beneficial than evenly distributed memories? I disagree. You need both. Having one, no matter how great it is, will impair your functioning.

I think what people are trying to say is that not everyone with autism has that much trouble with working memory. So for some the short and long term memories aren't as unbalanced. I'm sorry you're struggling with it so much, maybe you can find something to help improve your working memory to ease some of your troubles.

My long term memory is great, but my short term memory isn't so much. I wonder if there would be a way to do something about Autism Speaks somehow? Or maybe start our own group about how Autism and Asperger's are gifts and Autisians and Aspergians are great, wonderful people to sort of counter-balance them? Any ideas?

And my point was that memory isn't some huge advantage to every autistic individual which was implied by Ganondox, and that a lot of us actually struggle because of it. Quote I'm talking about:

What he said isn't wrong just because it doesn't specifically apply to you and I don't think that he was implying that it applies to every autistic person, just a lot of us. I do see a lot of benefits to being autistic but I also see some drawbacks and that's true about nearly everything. Besides NT's aren't devoid of issues, their lives are not perfect either. Depression, anxiety, memory issues and anger can all be problems for NT's as well. Having autism does make us different but not as different as you might think.

Then what advantages are there that each and every single person with autism has compared to absolutely no NTs? I can't think of any, and yet it keeps being mentioned.

Some of the advantages that SOME people here talk about are having great long term memory, being able to focus on a singular task for hours, a strong attention to details, resistance to salesmen and pitchmen, resistance to peer pressure (in some cases) and creative thinking. Look there are NO traits that are shared by absolutely everyone on the spectrum and no one here is saying otherwise. Just because YOU may not have some of these traits, that does not mean that they are not prevalent among the autistic population.

But are these traits more prevalent than in NTs? Don't they have way more things they can do which we can't?

Autism Speaks are a**holes. Summarized them in a punchline.

Actually no. I have better long term memory than just about everyone I know, I am quicker to answer trivia questions or point out a connection than all my friends. Like I said just because someone is NT doesn't mean they're automatically better. I know many NT's who struggle with self control, memory, and anger. Also an NT's are not always intelligent or competent. I know a lot of really dumb people and they're all NT. There is also a good chance that the things you are struggling with are not entirely caused by being autistic. It sounds like you are feeling pretty depressed about this, and it is possible that the reason you are struggling to see the positives is because you are experiencing a depressive episode. One thing depression does is it causes a person to adopt an all or nothing attitude.