Autobiographical memory

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What do you think of this theory? Can you relate?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3542927/

The article is a little overwhelming for me to read and digest in a reasonable amount of time. Can you summarize the concept?

I've heard about this for a few years, but I'm not sure about how the study is "framed."

My son is neurotypical and is two. I have an autistic little brother who is a lot younger than me, so I was a teenager when he was a little kid. I can see where my son is very interested in himself and how he appears to others already, and that didn't seem to occur to my brother until he was pretty old. As in, my son likes to look at his own face and likes to make faces at himself in the mirror to look "cool". He likes to impress other people and flirt with women. My brother didn't concern himself with that type of thing when he was little.

So I would think that a neurotypical's memories would involve their own self as the hero and central figure of the event. I would think that an autistic person's memories would be more unique. And since these studies are using the neurotypical Self as a Central Figure as what is normal, we aren't learning other things- such is how accurate are memories in a NT versus an autistic person? It could be that memories are more vivid for a NT because we reinforce them with our imaginations whereas autistic people are letting them fade naturally.

Supposedly, neurotypicals have vivid memories from childhood involving themselves. They can tell stories of things that happened to themselves and recall them with detail.

Autistic people can recall less memories involving themselves as a "central figure" or "actor" which is what they mean by "autobiographical memory."

An example would be, "When I was five I put mud all over my hands and made handprints all along the side of the house my mom was renting. I remember how my handprints looked in a line along the side of the house. My mom got mad and made me wash off all the handprints. I was angry because I thought I was too little to get into trouble." That is an autobiographical memory, it involved me, how things looked, what happened, and how I felt.

That's great. COuld you also give an example of a supposed AS memory?

Oh, I see. Thank you for explaining it. I remember things as if I were watching myself in a movie. I actually see myself doing the things that I remember. It is almost as I were up in a tree looking down at myself. I can do that extremely well and I will often watch "the movie" of something with me as the main character and when I do I can see if from an unbiased point of view and then I can analyze it. Sometimes that is the only way that I can explain to someone how I was emotionally feeling about something. I won't understand the emotion during the actual event but later, when I watch the "movie" and analyze it, I am completely emotionally unattached to what I am watching and then I can identify what happened and what I was feeling.

I don't know how many AS people do this but I remember when I was reading Tony Attwood's book, The Complete Guide To Asperger's Syndrome, I read a section where he said that Aspies can do this exceptionally well. I know that not all Aspies can identify the feelings but he said that this concept of seeing yourself as if in a movie after the fact and being completely detached from the incident so that you can analyze it is common in Asperger's. Since he was specifically talking about Asperger's in his book and since I am HFA, I can only speak from that perspective. I don't know how LFA's experience memories if it is the same or different.

^That's it! That's how I remember: like a movie in my head!

Are you what would be considered "higher functioning" or "lower functioning"? I am curious if it makes a difference.

Supposedely this autobiographical memory issue accounts for the failure of aspies to learn lessons from social faux-pas in order to avoid them in the future.

^^Um...high functioning, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really an Aspie, though.

What makes you wonder that?

^Well...it's a bit hard to explain. Do you know anything about Crystal Children?

I have never heard of the term Crystal Children. I don't know what it means.

I have autobiographical memories starting from when I was 2 years old, and I remember being analytical when I was a small child.
I remember observing and analyzing my environment in my earliest memories.

And I'm the same now as I was then, always in my head thinking and analyzing instead of interacting with people.
And I never learned how to get along with people. Always on the inside looking out.

My GUESS (only a guess) is that autistic people have a variety of ways of remembering things. If you had a group of neurotypical people and then a group of autistic people and asked them to describe their memory systems, I would bet that the neurotypical people would have more systems in common than the autistic people.

The reason is because neurotypical people will notice if they're doing something differently and stop doing it. We have a need to blend in and be accepted. Autistic people also have this need, but it's not as strong.

You might have heard of "indigo children". Its the same New Age concept. The next wave of kids being born after indigo children are/were "crystal children". But I couldnt tell the specifics of what that means.