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Cognative Storage Systems

I'm primarily a visual thinker and I can relate to what Temple Grandin says about thinking in pictures. If says "Beatles" to me, then images come into my head of all the albums they have released, some songs I know. Or I can see events unfolding like a filmclip. I can also use other sensory information associated with the memory to recall it, such as location, smells, colours, etc. I have difficulty recalling faces.

How does the 'average person' usually recall information? Do they recall information in a different way?
 
flowers said:
I've seen lots of topics about this sort of thing and I don't really understand. I do not have a system where I consciously store things or can go and pick things out to look at like I'm at a library or something.

When I remember past memories they are usually devoid of people and I can see all the details though. Very visual. But I never try and go through a storage system in my mind to remember things. Maybe I am misunderstanding.
Click to expand...

Flowers, I read a book in my teens or 50 years ago by ? Harry Lorayne ?on how to remember things. It is an ancient system and has been re addressed numerous times by others.
It is a way of establishing memories and obscurities with something you are very familiar with, your residence for example. The memory is brought up by triggering a usually humorous and unforgettable image.
It requires some focus and training but is easy and effective and has served me well for a lifetime.
One more point, feed your head every day. When one does not put useful thoughts into the mind, do not expect useful thoughts to come out of the mind. GIGO!
Train your mind. It is never too late.
 
Nitro said:
From what I understand,some have eidetic memories that are pictures lacking in details. I get crystal clear entire images and moving clips that take on a 3-D in detail with the ability to move around in them.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, I think 'pictures lacking in details' is the best way to describe it. For more vivid memories I remember some information, but for the most part any memory is just an image, with no backstory at all. I don't have the ability to see them in 3-D , though that sounds incredibly fascinating (not to mention helpful)
I'm able to recall most of my life events (starting from about age 3) with great clarity (in the sense of visuals), however that could be because I'm young. My mom talks about things she says I remember but I think I've forgotten them overtime. I fear as I get older (as in an adult, not elderly) I might loose those memories from when I was a toddler. But who knows, I may surprise myself :)
 
Eidetic memory plays a role on the younger population,but can cross over to adulthood at times.
All people are different in one way or another,not just the auties. Because psychology has too many unknowns,it is impossible for those who don't experience each of our lives to agree on most anything.Psychologists can only interpret what they think they understand.
Can I actually remember everything? I am not sure,I can usually pull up images of nearly anything my mind held an interest in,but have little control over what is presented. Often a series of images will cue others to appear and it can get very cluttered upstairs when that happens. I often pause and stare into space when I am in thought as the image stacks get overwhelming and my optical vision takes a back seat as my brain has to sort then review thousands of images that are presented in rushes.

It is very hard to describe how my mind works as it is a hyper-analytic state around the clock. I process way too much information all the time,exploring minutia well beyond what is necessary to function and then reassemble what I see and from memory to put the full picture together. My sense of awareness allows me to try mechanical engineering tasks inside my head before anything is brought to paper or CAD or machines. I have littered the entire world with my various accomplishments in manufacturing with designs and products that have touched every person on the planet is some way.I owe all of this to my gifts from the autism spectrum and nothing more.
 
tree said:
Harry Lorayne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Over 2 dozen of his books linked in this article.

Epicurean Pariah
Want to tag people in posts?
Make their name and avatar show in miniature?

The way your name & avatar shows....right here--- Epicurean Pariah.

Use the @ sign followed by the person's user name, no space in between.
Click to expand...
tree, I was wondering how people did that. The avatar pops up but I don't think it inserts itself and when I click it vanishes. Hmm?
Edit post script, I see it clearly now. Thanks. I don't know how to copy and paste either. I am a media dunce.
 
Epicurean Pariah said:
tree, I was wondering how people did that. The avatar pops up but I don't think it inserts itself and when I click it vanishes. Hmm?
Click to expand...
Yes, if you type slowly, the little avatar does show itself.
That is another way to do it.

However, you can make...for instance.... tree
show up, a miniature avatar-----by entering the @ sign followed by the name
you wish to tag. @ (name) with no space in between the @ sign and the name.
 
The Phantom said:
Hmmm, I think 'pictures lacking in details' is the best way to describe it. For more vivid memories I remember some information, but for the most part any memory is just an image, with no backstory at all. I don't have the ability to see them in 3-D , though that sounds incredibly fascinating (not to mention helpful)
I'm able to recall most of my life events (starting from about age 3) with great clarity (in the sense of visuals), however that could be because I'm young. My mom talks about things she says I remember but I think I've forgotten them overtime. I fear as I get older (as in an adult, not elderly) I might loose those memories from when I was a toddler. But who knows, I may surprise myself :)
Click to expand...

The Phantom, I am 67 and I will share this.
As you age time moved faster. Youngsters can have 1000 adventures in a long summer day. Oldsters have months that fly by quickly.
I would also add as one that who felt that, danger was my destiny, and that has been ridden hard and put away wet so many times it became my comfort zone, that in time all the good thing in life float to the surface of the mind and all but the very worst of experiences, submerge into the vastness of memory.
 
tree said:
Yes, if you type slowly, the little avatar does show itself.
That is another way to do it.

However, you can make...for instance.... tree
show up, a miniature avatar-----by entering the @ sign followed by the name
you wish to tag. @ (name) with no space in between the @ sign and the name.
Click to expand...
tree, thanks again.
Edit ps/ at 67 I do type slowly as well as everything else I break and leave parts of me behind. Add in some Oldtimers disease, and forgetting where I lost my mind, let's say, and you can imagine the fix that I am in. It's all ahead of us all, whatever we leave behind.
 
Last edited:
Nitro said:
Eidetic memory plays a role on the younger population,but can cross over to adulthood at times.
All people are different in one way or another,not just the auties. Because psychology has too many unknowns,it is impossible for those who don't experience each of our lives to agree on most anything.Psychologists can only interpret what they think they understand.
Can I actually remember everything? I am not sure,I can usually pull up images of nearly anything my mind held an interest in,but have little control over what is presented. Often a series of images will cue others to appear and it can get very cluttered upstairs when that happens. I often pause and stare into space when I am in thought as the image stacks get overwhelming and my optical vision takes a back seat as my brain has to sort then review thousands of images that are presented in rushes.

It is very hard to describe how my mind works as it is a hyper-analytic state around the clock. I process way too much information all the time,exploring minutia well beyond what is necessary to function and then reassemble what I see and from memory to put the full picture together. My sense of awareness allows me to try mechanical engineering tasks inside my head before anything is brought to paper or CAD or machines. I have littered the entire world with my various accomplishments in manufacturing with designs and products that have touched every person on the planet is some way.I owe all of this to my gifts from the autism spectrum and nothing more.
Click to expand...

Nitro, thank you. There are several of us here that even though we are considered disabled and diseased have overcome all obstacles and attained the rarified strata on the summits of human accomplishment. Personally I think some would pay handsomely for Asper in a pill. If for no other reason than to focus on goals rather than their social standing their personal dissipation into a meaningless and contrived social construct.
I could be wrong.
 
I don't necessarily organize information intentionally. It organizes itself :) I think our organization systems isn't much different from typical ones, the difference may be in the type of information we store. I believe I tend to store plenty of strange, useless, but wonderful information. But then again, I'm sure many people with similar mind (regardless the spectrum) may be storing the same type of information. I have memory problems. I started having them pretty early. It's not severe but it's bothersome. I remember random moments, sometimes I'm not sure what time they belong to. Than I can't remember what I did yesterday. I remember smells, sounds, tiniest details related to unknown events. And that's fine. Just this evening I was looking at my son's hand, thinking, "will I remember these tiny puffy fingers with dirt and sand on them from running outside for hours" and I think I will. But when that memory randomly enters my mind in the future, I don't see myself remembering when and why it has been stored.
 
Place, time, relevant/proximate visuals, first letters to any associated words. Might have to circle around these to zero in on exact memory of interest.
 
I think in a very hierarchical/web-like structure and also very visually. If you have ever used any link analysis software or have seen a complex depiction of a routing network, the diagrams that these produce would be the perfect visual descriptions of how I think. One thought or memory will spur several others, which then follow a similar pattern all the way to the piece of information that I need. Unfortunately, I do not always think in terms of "shortest path first" and may go through a long route with ten different thoughts/memories between my initiation and the detail that I am looking for when it may have only been two hops away. Whenever I pass through each individual thought looking for the specific memory required, I can "open" them up and see them visually.

I have never really thought about what links my thoughts together before, though. I just know that certain things naturally link together and various lines of thought link together much like a web. It is very similar to the way in which I process multiple lines of thought at once.
 
Primarily visual-spatial and aural. If I need to recall the spelling of a word, an everyday object, location, music, sound, etc., it's right there in front of my eyes and/or ears. Not literally, mind you, but almost exactly how it was when I first came across it. Images, video clips, and 3D? No problem!

I think I read something about certain people being able to recall entire conversations and lectures as if they were playing an audio tape? That I find very fascinating, but I definitely can't do it no matter how hard I try.
 
Remembering things I learned is easy for me, but memories as in things I did or conversations I had tends to be terrible. Sometimes I don't even know what I had for dinner yesterday or tell people the stories they told me because I thought I heard it from somebody else, but other times I still know minute details of the specific wording somebody used.

I don't really know how i memorize things, it's more visual as anything else, like a picture with some description to it.

I can remember stories very easily but not things I did etc.

Like I often struggle recalling what I had for dinner yesterday or what my classmates name is, but I do remember dozens of weird facts about pretty much any topic people bring up, and they just pop up in my head. Like some small guy in my head is feeding them through a machine that suddenly makes me remember them, there's not much logic or sense in it for as far as I know yet. Trouble is that I often think way faster as I can keep track of so my thoughts and conversations derail so quickly that often I don't even know what I'm blabbering on about
 
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