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half-aspi
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

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Joined: 5 Jun 2012
Gender: Male
Posts: 3

25 Jun 2012, 8:05 am

Sounds probably strange for an Aspi but I have a very good memory for faces. If I interacted with someone for some time I recognize that person for years. Not always the names but the faces are burned in. It even works with pictures online, I was writing with someone and later saw that person running around... later confirmed.



Ascagne
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

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Joined: 25 Jan 2009
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 65
Location: France

30 Jul 2012, 7:39 pm

My memory is at its best when it comes to go back to the bad and worst moments of my life (except for a period in my childhood where things didn't go well at school with some NTs I think [a kind of moral (at least) bullying], a period that is "blocked", and maybe it's best that way). I remember acutely humiliations, or errors of some importance I did. Once the memory has surfaced, it's hard to repress it and I feel as if I were nothing, a zero (it does that to me even if I have had just before a great achievement)...
I have a good or an excellent memory for things of little (or no) immediate value (in what regards my academic needs, for example), which is not always really cool. It's not cool to have in mind countless episodes of TV series, the mythologies and backgrounds of several fictionnal universes (mine included), and to not be able, in the meantime, to retain as I would like ancient greek hard words of historic dates (the kind of things I need in my studies). Furthermore, I think I virtually know the simplified retranscription by myself of countless pieces of music (I've a good ear)... but I'm a student in literature, not in music.
The proficiency and ability of my memory don't seem to be constant ; it's variable. The problem is that I'm kind of lazy with memorization, and the "learning by rote" method never actually worked with me. I've utterly strange and unusual ways of learning (I cannot describe them myself). But eventually, I rely on my ability to process very large amounts of data at the same time without problem (I multitask, and I frequently have an infinity of tabs opened at the same time on several windows of my Internet browser), not really on memorization (even though the two can meet). That's why I do much better, academically speaking, in research (for a dissertation for example) than in exams that would require a great lot of memorization... For my last dissertation (a "mémoire" in French), which was 200 pages long, I had a longer bibliography than some doctoral dissertations. The professor was quite amazed in a good way (she told me she would never have asked me to search that much) and kind of thought it had been a hard work for me... It wasn't. :wink:
My autobiographical memory is fluctuant : above average or much above average in some cases, normal or even below average in others. In the cases when it's very good, it's a cause of boredom and ennui to myself ; for example, I've made several trips to Paris (usually a week during the holiday) since a few years, with a parent, and I cannot really enjoy when we go to the same places or do the same things (because my parent has forgotten or has a different experience than me, and is amazed when I tell him or her what he had forgotten).
Also, I've got a kind of quite good "meta-memory" - I don't know if there is a more appropriate word. It's when, for instance, I know at what page of the book a fact was written and explained, but I'm not able to easily regain the memory of that fact. It's maybe more common with me than with others.
Last but not least : in what regards my imagination, I've a really good memory. I build "systems", fictionnal universes, scenarios, schemes and plans, etc., without having to write but a fraction of them.
Excuse me for the length of the message. It seems I'm in the mood for confessions.