Do people on the spectrum have good memories?

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I remember making a topic about bad memories a while back but I seem to have a good memory overall. Related to my interests I can remember the plotline of books I've read years ago and just while chatting with a cousin told her I remembered a song me/her wrote she said she didn't remember that. LOL! I have a bad memory when it comes to doing chores (Go do this (trash etc.) (later on) Didn't you hear me tell you take out the trash? Me: I forgot (LOL!) Is anyone else like this? Thanks. From tv shows it seems that autistics have a good memory.

me too

I remember random things. Like once, my dad was driving on a road and there was a sign saying "The speed limit is 60km/h, you are driving _____. And the blank was a digital lighting that changes after each car passes by. My dad was driving 83km/h and that was many years ago. I bet if I asked anyone in my family they would probably be like "I don't even remember such a sign."

Yes, pretty random unless it's my special interest.

If I've been a place once, I can usually find it again months and sometimes years later, and it's really wierd how I do it, kind of by geo-positioning and matching the pictures in my head, though if you asked me to describe the route, I couldn't do it. I have to travel it.

Interactions with others tend not to stick, unless it's traumatic... even a slight disagreement I can recall word for word. But take out the trash? Very iffy, especially if I'm thinking about something more interesting.

Nothing like a little stress to make me notice another human being! LOL

I found my recall of those incidents really worked against me... I'd relive it over and over.

I'd like to know why I can't recall the kind, supportive, nice things people say to me so vividly. Now that'd be helpful! So I save those notes, cards, and emails to look at when I hit the ol' psycho skids.

Like now....

Uhm...what was the question?

I remember passwords to a computer system i used on my first job back in 1994 and other systems i used later on. Does that count?

For me it would entirely depend on how we're defining memory and/or in the formal-clinical sense...what type of memory we're talking about it.


There doesn't seem to be anything significantly wrong with my short-term/working memory. This is based upon my self-observations AND the results of all my memory tests on the neuropsychological evaluations i've had.

However...there seems to be plenty of reason to believe the conventional neuropsychological memory tests are limited at best in terms of what they can reveal about LONG TERM memory.

http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/con ... /123/3/472


Based upon my own self-observations alone...I believe I have profound impairments in long term memory specifically in terms of semantic, procedural and episodic memory. Provided these impairments have a genuine neurological basis and are not just something
i've *somehow* exaggerated or imagined, they have severely impacted me in almost every area of my life including academic performance, vocational skills, skills unrelated to either, etc....

I have discussed these issues before in detail countless times on WP and I won't do so here again.

All I can say is that these problems seem very, very real to me and if so, they have thus far been undetected by any neuropsychological test of memory. Hence the entire reason i'm trying to find a suitable research study I could participate in which includes an MRI and/or some other type of neuroimagining.

While there is no guarantee an MRI, etc...could tell me anything further about these problems, I know of no better method of identifying the cause/s (or at least....the likely cause/s) of long term memory problems.


The article I posted mentions the MRI data from the epileptic patients studied and said data does yield findings like arachnoid cysts and hippocampal sclerosis which may in turn be the origins of the long term memory problems these patients complained of.

Furthermore...the MRI data from the late Kim Peek offered some possible causes (complete agenesis of the corpus callosum for one thing) for his remarkable Eidetic memory.

Whatever the case with me.....long term memory problems seem very uncommon for people on the spectrum. If anything...people on the spectrum seem to disproportionately exhibit excellent and even, Eidetic, long term memory abilites. Likewise...deficits in short-term/working memory seem quite common among those on the spec.

My own case appears to be diametrically opposite of this. Hence the reason I believe any long-term memory problems I might have may not be related to my NVLD (and many professionals consider NVLD and Asperger's one and the same. No matter what...I think everyone agrees the two disorders are extremely similar) at all.

My good memories are linked to my special intrests. For instance going to see The Lion King for the first time and finding Lion King related things in stores everywhere. people. But anyway, my best memories have to do with my special intrests.

"Didn't you hear me tell you take out the trash? Me: I forgot (LOL!) Is anyone else like this? Thanks."
lol, I'm like this too. Often I'm focused on something else, so the instruction never gets into my brain in the first place. Or I don't have the working memory to remember what I'm supposed to be doing till it's time to do the chore. Drove my parents crazy when I was little, lol. Now I just try to do the chore immediately.

In general, my long term memory is OK but nothing special; I tend to remember the "gist" rather than word for word what someone said. If I try to think of a memory, the visual and tactile parts don't feel very vivid, but they feel totally real if they're triggered by some experience I have. For example, I feel a particular way when I meditate under a particular tree, and when I do it, all the other times I meditated under that tree and how I felt at the time come flooding back. I'm probably best at procedural memory; I can remember violin pieces I learned to play when I was 5 and could play them right now (badly) even though I haven't picked up the violin in over a year. Thank goodness procedural stuff sticks, because learning how to do something procedurally in the first place is almost impossible for me!

Mosaicofminds wrote

My mind is like a sponge. I soak up everything I see, hear, feel, smell or taste. I can remember these things years afterwards....

But dagnabbit, my short term memory is CRAP!! !

I am extraordinary (apparently) with directions. I have never got lost in my life. I can remember a route to the point where I can actually remember how many trees, buildings or lamp posts you have to pass before turning. I can see every road marking, every lane. The only thing that can stop me recalling a route is a sudden change (roadworks etc.) or sensory overload. I often struggle in cities for example.

My dad says it is funny (I am assuming not funny 'ha ha' though) that I can remember such tiny details about my childhood as young as 4 years old. He thinks it is funny (I think this is ha ha funny) how I remember parking our blue Volvo 340GL underneath a tree outside my Grandpa's flat in Folkestone and we returned to find it covered in bird 'gifts'. I was only about 7 years old.

I too have a tendency to remember more traumatic events, never word for word though. I get confused in a difficult social situation. Unfortunately this only serves to remind me of every time I got beaten, every name called and every death.

Apart from that it is pretty good, although it would be more usefull to be able to remember two instructions one after the other STRAIGHT AWAY rather than two weeks later! I literally have to run around our local supermarket to buy everything I need in time, before I forget it. I must look like a right lunatic! Oh well.

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

i think it varies. there are many kinds of memory, therefore such a question is unclear.

i could remember things since i was one, yet there was this rather humiliating incident when this girl from the choir i am in started talking to me and i had no recollection of who she was, or her name or her face. it turns out that i have even talked to her before. i could usually retain things for a long time, yet when i am observing something, i cannot seem to decide what is important to remember and what is not. therefore, if i am listening to a lecture, instead of remembering important things that someone has said, all i could remember is something like the pattern in the carpet.

i also find that if i have to remember something, it has to be memorized in a step by step manner rather than all at once.

My daughter does. Her episodic memory is far more detailed than mine. I remember the gist of things that happened, the salient points. She remembers all the little details, like that it was Tuesday and I was wearing green pants and we had ravioli for dinner. She also says, "Remember when you said..." I rarely have any memory of saying whatever it is. But I believe her.