Coping with Working memory issues

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My son seems tohave difficulty remembering facts ,but not images. What helps ?

My son is 12 has ADHD, ASD and high IQ. I just realised today that his issues with learning at school may not be because he is bored or lacks attention as
after 8 years of school second languages he only remembers the words from kindergarten where they learnt by rote.
Instead it may be he that he has working memory issues ( languages , times tables, what's happened today, spelling rules, phone numbers ). He reads but slowly
But his visual skills are awesome (eg that guy who died in Orville has been an extra multiple times , memory games with images was unbeatable , spots very small changes in images, huge maps in Minecraft , lots of old and new Lego models and their design etc)

He said he had tried memory palaces and it hadn't worked . Does it work for ASD.


Vent - I have asd and I just expected my children to be different in the same way. I wouldn't change them, but it just gets difficult because I don't know what to do

http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html

He may be similar to Temple Gradin.

"I THINK IN PICTURES. Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures. Language-based thinkers often find this phenomenon difficult to understand, but in my job as an equipment designer for the livestock industry, visual thinking is a tremendous advantage.
Visual thinking has enabled me to build entire systems in my imagination. During my career I have designed all kinds of equipment, ranging from corrals for handling cattle on ranches to systems for handling cattle and hogs during veterinary procedures and slaughter. I have worked for many major livestock companies. In fact, one third of the cattle and hogs in the United States are handled in equipment I have designed. Some of the people I've worked for don't even know that their systems were designed by someone with autism. I value my ability to think visually, and I would never want to lose it."

Here are two suggestions:

When he reads, have him read out loud. It will help in retention.

When I was a freshman in high school, they recognized my limitations in reading and put me in a type of special class. Today, it would be called a class in speed reading. It helped me. I have short term memory problems. So whenever I tried to read a paragraph, it would take hours. I would read the first sentence. Then I would read the second sentence. But by the time I finished the second sentence, I had forgotten what the first sentence was about. So I would have to reread it. So I was essential stuck in a constant do-loop. What speed reading did was allow me to quickly identify one or two most important words in a paragraph. These became anchors. They held the paragraph together. Then when I read everything was always tied back to the anchors. In a way it was like reading a paragraph from the inside out.