Ulterior Interior: Memory

Part one of three parts by Duane Alan Hahn.

I created these Ulterior Interior pages in case they might help someone. I get an ignorant troll or two making fun of me because of these pages once in a while, but it seems like these pages help others more than they hurt me, so I'll keep them up.

Some of the things I mention about my memory may not have anything to do with Asperger's Syndrome. Since I only know what it's like to have my brain, I listed everything I thought might be helpful. I tried to keep out what I've heard is commonly shared by most people.

Recognition Memory

I've heard from many different sources that most people have the ability to remember things and play them back in their minds. Most people can supposedly play back still pictures, moving pictures, shapes, colors, smells, sounds, tastes, touch, and words.

I can't play back those kinds of things in the normal way. If you ask me to remember something that happened, I can usually tell you most of what happened, but the information comes from an invisible blob of knowledge. There are usually no pictures, sounds, smells or anything like that. It's like a cloudy confused mess of plain facts that are jumbled closer to the actual event, gets clearer in detail after awhile, then slowly jumbles and fades away again. I have a bad short term memory and only a good long term memory for trivial things.

I have a hard time recalling, bringing up something from my memory on my own, but my recognition memory is usually better than average. I'm usually the first person to recognize an actor under tons of makeup. I was great at multiple choice tests at school, but give me the same test without the choices and it's almost impossible for me to find the information in my head unless it's something really easy.

It seems like I have almost no ability to retain useful information. I have to basically start from scratch every time I try to do just about anything. Have you ever seen the movie Clean Slate starring Dana Carvey? I'm not that bad, but I'm pretty darn close when it comes to remembering anything useful. I have to relearn just about anything that's worth doing. Taking notes would help for the next time, but I usually think "there is no way I could forget this" and then I do.

Color Blind Memory

I can only remember colors of familiar objects. I don't see the colors in my mind, I just know the colors of most basic things from experience.

Some people say that they only dream in black and white. I know for sure that I dream in color, I just can't remember things in color while I'm awake.

Still and Moving Pictures

Most of the time, I can only remember that something exists. I can't bring up a picture of the object in my mind. The times when I can bring up the shape of something from my mind, it kind of looks fuzzy, faded, and black and white. If you've ever stared at that famous picture of Abraham Lincoln then stared at a white wall, you can get an idea of how I remember things visually.

The strange thing is that once in awhile I will have a few second playback of things that happened in the past. They seem to be in color but I can't tell what the colors are. It must be great If other people can remember things in moving color all of the time. Update January 2008: I was able to take supplements more regularly starting in 2003 and it seems that my moving picture memory playback has improved since then. I can remember more 'video clips' from my past now. Sound isn't usually a part of the clips and I still can't pick out specific colors, but the clips seem to be in color. I have been told that most 'normal' people's memories are from a third-person perspective, so it might be helpful to know that any video clip memories that I have are from the first-person perspective that I had at the time (the way I originally saw things).

Sounds and Music

It's almost impossible to play back voices and most sounds in my mind, but I can play back music and singing. Orchestra music such as movie soundtracks play back the best. I can only play back small segments at a time though. It's usually the same or a slightly improved version of the original.

I can only play back music that I'm familiar with. I have to hear a song many times before it will play back and then the voice of the person singing isn't really singing recognizable words, it's more like listening to music in another language with a few understandable words thrown in.

Sometimes a piece of a song will play back in my mind and I'll wonder why and then I figure out that the words of that song match the situation I'm in or what I'm doing. It's like my subconscious mind is trying to communicate with me the best way it can.

Smell and Taste

I have spontaneous smell memories a few times a year, but that's all. I can recognize a smell, but I can't consciously access a smell stored in memory. The same is true for taste. I'll have spontaneous taste 'flashbacks' a few times a year, but the rest of the time, I can only recognize tastes when I eat something.

I've heard that most people can play back a memory of the smell and taste of food they see in food commercials. When a commercial comes on that shows some kind of food I like, the carefully constructed images designed to make me recreate the taste and smell of the food doesn't work on me. If the average person really can remember the smell and taste of the food in commercials, no wonder companies pay huge amounts of money on commercials so they can control people with their own memories.

Since it's hard for my brain to remember things like taste and smell, it seems to use flags or registers for just about everything. Anything I could possibly have an opinion about has its own register, (similar to a computer), which seems to have seven conditions which run from negative three to positive three.

-3	terrible
-2	bad
-1	poor
0	undecided
1	OK
2	good
3	great

Even though I have these registers for every item, sometimes the register for an item gets misplaced or gets reset back to undecided and I'll have to ask someone what my preference used to be.

Touch and Emotions

I don't see how people remember touch, but some supposedly do. I've heard that some people, especially actors, can also remember what it's like to be hot or cold. Actors can also remember emotional events and use them in a scene. I heard a child actor say to Johnny Carson that when he has to cry, he remembers when his dog died, then he can cry whenever he wants. I can't do any of that.

A lot of the self-help books and tapes by people like Anthony Robbins don't work on me either. You have to be able to visualize things and move them around in your mind and you also have to put yourself into different emotional states. Those kinds of books and tapes are for a much different person than I am. No wonder actors love Anthony Robbins so much. His stuff sound like it was made to work just for them.

Words

Many times a day, since I was a kid, I've had trouble finding the word I want to say or type. It's usually a word that I use all of the time. I can describe what it is and even point to it if it's an object in the room, but I can't find it's name in my memory. It reminds me of mental stuttering.

My spelling abilities also come and go. Sometimes I can type in a page of information with no spelling errors and other times I will spell the same word three different ways on the same page.

Repetitive Tasks

I can do a repetitive activity for a certain amount of time with no trouble and then I'll forget what to do for a few seconds, to a few minutes. This seems similar to my word accessing problem. It can be any repetitive activity that I like or dislike.

I even have trouble playing a video game or using a computer. I'll be pressing the same buttons or selecting the same items with a mouse pointer and then I'll forget what a button does or what an icon does or means. After a few seconds or minutes I'll usually remember again.

Lists

I think that everyone should make lists but many people don't seem to need them. I have a hard enough time remembering one thing I'm supposed to get, I don't see how people remember five or more things.

From the time I was around six years old, I was amazed by the memory abilities of most other kids. A mother could tell her kid to buy a certain amount of things at a corner grocery store, and the kid could remember what to buy from being just told once and would come back with everything he or she was told to get.

I can't remember lists because I forget most of it or my brain replaces and rearranges things. The first time I consciously realized that I had a problem was when I was eight years old. My mother told me to go to a small local store to buy a bag of shredded coconut. After I got to the store, I had one of those anxiety feelings where you feel like you're going to cry because I couldn't remember the name of the thing I was supposed to get. I remembered it was white and after agonizing over it for a while, I bought a bag of white rice.

My problem with lists also shows up if I repeat a list of numbers when given a test. If I can just concentrate on hearing the sound patterns and rhythms of the test giver's voice, without trying to visualize the numbers, I can usually repeat them with few errors. But, if I try to see those numbers on the watery blackboard of my mind, I have a lot of trouble.

It's sort of like the person giving the number test writes the list of numbers on the boards of a rickety rope bridge, then tells me to walk across the bridge and read the numbers out loud as I go. The bridge starts to crumble behind me and some boards drop out in front of me from the vibration. By the time I get to the other side, very little is left of the bridge and the test giver doesn't understand why I can't cross the bridge again and read the numbers backwards.

Puzzle Pieces

My memory reminds me of puzzle pieces. Sometimes whole sections of the puzzle are together which means that I can remember a nice chunk of the past and other times the pieces are totally scattered and some are even temporarily lost under a seat cushion. I never know how much I might remember from day to day.

Memory Asperger's Syndrome Eyesight