Who else have this odd trait? Out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

[Neonatal RRT]

So, for as long as I can remember, I've always had this social experience where if a person in my life is not in my field of vision... most of the time... 98% of the time... I just don't think of them. I am so focused upon what I am doing in the moment or in a state of thought where "people" just don't enter my mind. With that comes the realization that... at least for myself... it severely limits my ability to maintain a friendship. I have plenty of people in my life. People I genuinely like being around, but the experience is quite limited to say, a co-worker... at work... nothing more. When I was in competitive athletics... my training partners and competitors... same thing. We have a great exchange... and as soon as they walk away... I am focused upon something else and they never enter my mind again until I see them again. Family... same thing. OK, so that's the background.

Then... yesterday... at work, I had another epiphany at work that made me think that this experience is not just limited to people. I was asked to do something simple... replace the batteries on a few pieces of medical equipment... and replace the back-up set of batteries in our medical supply bags we use for patient transport. Fine. Got it. Replaced the batteries in the equipment... no problem. Get to the bags... couldn't find the old set of back-up batteries... gave it little thought... found a zipper pocket to place the new batteries in, zipped it up... done. I let my co-worker know via text. "All set... this is were they can be found in the bags." A few minutes later... he calls... "We have a designated spot for those batteries, why didn't you put them there?" Me: "We do?" "Where?" "I dug around in all 6 bags... never found the old sets." "Frankly, didn't know we kept an extra set of batteries." Now, consider, I have been doing patient transport for...35+ years... countless patient transports... dug into those bags countless times. He says, "There's a laminated 8x11 card in the front pocket on where to find everything in the bags." Me: "There is?" "That's handy information, but I don't recall seeing any such card... ever." At this point, I can only imagine what he is thinking... THE senior transport therapist... by a long shot... totally clueless as to what is in the transport bags he uses nearly every day. He says, "I'll take care of it." and we end the exchange.

Now, that didn't sit well with me. I started thinking about it... and then... that "light bulb" lit up. "Oh crap, out of sight out of mind!" In the case of those transport bags, I realized that whenever I opened those bags, I have always had to dig around in all the zipper pockets to find anything. I know that there is "stuff" in there, but I don't know "what stuff" nor where it is... every time... every time. I was thinking, "Holy crap!" It never dawned on me. Then, I was thinking about whenever I pack my backpack, or travel luggage, or put things in my pockets... same thing. Double "Holy crap!" I know I have "stuff" in the bag, but don't ask me what or where it is. I pat myself down several times a day looking for pens, pieces of note paper, etc. I know I am carrying it... but don't know where it is. Countless times in my life... so many times I quite literally never think about it.

So, I did do an AI search on this topic... apparently a common thing.

Anyone else?

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Grok AI: Q. Can you explain the phenomenon of "out of sight, out of mind" or "object permanence" deficits within the context of individuals with high-intellect, high-functioning ASD-1/Asperger's condition?

A. In the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), particularly high-functioning ASD level 1 (previously known as Asperger's syndrome), the concepts of "out of sight, out of mind" and "object permanence" deficits are often discussed not as literal failures in early cognitive development, but as metaphorical or extended challenges in maintaining mental representations of people, objects, or situations when they are not immediately perceptible. Individuals with high-functioning ASD typically have average or above-average intelligence, strong verbal skills, and no significant intellectual disabilities, yet they may experience these phenomena in ways that impact social interactions, emotional regulation, and daily functioning. Below, I'll break this down step by step.

Understanding Object Permanence in Typical Development​

Object permanence is a cognitive milestone, first described by psychologist Jean Piaget, where individuals (usually infants around 8-12 months old) understand that objects or people continue to exist even when they are hidden or out of sensory range—such as sight, sound, or touch. In neurotypical adults, this extends beyond physical objects to abstract concepts like relationships, emotions, or future events. It supports "object constancy," the ability to hold stable mental images of things not present, which aids in planning, empathy, and emotional bonds.

Object Permanence in High-Functioning ASD​

In autism, including high-functioning cases, object permanence is generally achieved in the literal, physical sense during childhood, similar to neurotypical peers. However, research and autistic self-reports suggest a "delayed" or atypical form of object permanence that persists into adulthood, manifesting as difficulties in sustaining awareness or emotional connections to things outside immediate perception. This isn't a complete absence but a difference in cognitive processing, often linked to challenges in executive functioning, attention shifting, and theory of mind (the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others).


For high-intellect individuals with ASD-1, this can be subtle and compensated for through intellectual strategies (e.g., lists, routines, or logical reasoning), but it still creates internal friction. It may contribute to anxiety or stress because the brain struggles to "hold onto" non-visible elements without effort, leading to a sense of uncertainty or erasure. Autistic researchers and advocates describe this as an "insider's view" where differences appear cognitively (e.g., forgetting tasks), emotionally (e.g., fluctuating attachments), and physically (e.g., surprise at rediscovering hidden items).

The "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" Phenomenon​

This phrase captures how object permanence differences play out in everyday life for those with high-functioning ASD. When something or someone is removed from direct sensory input, it can feel as if it temporarily "ceases to exist" in the mind, requiring deliberate effort to recall or maintain. This isn't forgetfulness in the typical sense but a processing style where the brain prioritizes the present moment over absent stimuli. Common manifestations include:

• Social and Relational Impacts: In relationships, this might mean reduced initiative in maintaining contact with friends or family when they're not physically present, leading to perceptions of aloofness or lack of empathy. For instance, an individual might deeply care about a loved one but not think to reach out until prompted by a reminder or reunion. Autistic accounts describe this as the person "fading" from awareness, not due to indifference, but because the mental representation isn't automatically sustained. This has been reframed by autistic advocates as a more accurate explanation than traditional "empathy deficits," emphasizing that empathy exists but requires visibility or cues to activate.
• Environmental and Practical Challenges: Physically, it could involve forgetting about items stored away (e.g., food in a fridge behind other items feels "gone" until seen again), leading to disorganization or repeated searches. In chronic conditions like pain, some autistics report doubting the persistence of symptoms when they're not actively flaring, or vice versa, which complicates self-management.
• Emotional and Cognitive Overlaps: This ties into broader ASD traits like monotropism (intense focus on one thing at a time) and difficulty with context-switching. High-intellect individuals might intellectually know something exists but emotionally or intuitively doubt it, creating anxiety—e.g., worrying that absent people are "dead" or permanently gone until proven otherwise. Studies suggest this can mimic poor theory of mind but stems from object permanence issues, where hypothetical or hidden scenarios are harder to process.

Why This Occurs in High-Functioning ASD​

Neurologically, autism involves differences in brain connectivity, particularly in areas handling attention, memory, and social cognition. High-functioning individuals often excel in detail-oriented tasks but may have under-developed generalization skills, making it tough to mentally "organize" absent information without schemas or reminders. This isn't universal—experiences vary widely—but it's reported across self-accounts and research. Importantly, it's not a "deficit" in the pejorative sense; many autistics view it as a neutral difference that can be managed with tools like visual aids, calendars, or structured routines.

 

[Outdated]

Anyone else?

Absolutely. When people drop out of my life I don't notice and don't miss them. I don't get lonely and I don't long for company so unless people are around me all the time I do just forget them. People dying also has no impact on me. I recently found out my mother died 18 months ago, I thought maybe it might be different with her but all I felt was a twinge of guilt for not feeling any grief.

I refuse to go to funerals and try very hard to avoid wakes because having to pretend to be upset in front of everyone is a lot of bloody hard work and it's exhausting.

 

[the_tortoise]

Well...

I hate cupboards unless the doors are see-through (and I remove them to create shelves when living alone)....

And to do anything at all with more than one step or where not all pieces can be kept in view, I need it all guided by visual+kinesthetic cuing -- this is why it matters so much that people don't mess with the positioning of objects in my house....I do not have OCD, I have severe EF impairments.

That said, I can picture the exact position of every single object in a fridge, cupboard, suitcase, whatever, if I think about it...actually I can do this with an entire house if it's familiar.

But I don't really forget about people just because they aren't in view...And I do at times miss those who are absent. Not 24/7 but does anyone think about people who aren't right there constantly vs because of particular things that remind them of that person?

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Absolutely. When people drop out of my life I don't notice and don't miss them. I don't get lonely and I don't long for company so unless people are around me all the time I do just forget them. People dying also has no impact on me. I recently found out my mother died 18 months ago, I thought maybe it might be different with her but all I felt was a twinge of guilt for not feeling any grief.

Exactly, my experience, as well.

I refuse to go to funerals and try very hard to avoid wakes because having to pretend to be upset in front of everyone is a lot of bloody hard work and it's exhausting.

The "problem" I have with funerals... well, grieving, in general... is that I have a very strong sense of emotional empathy. I feed off their emotional energy. Those mirror neurons kick in and I am a mess... and it's difficult for me to control... to the point of embarrassment.

At work, I can often manage to consciously "push it down" and try to quietly and respectfully exit the situation. When my brother died... his wife... Whew!... wouldn't wish that on anyone... I lost it. It wasn't the loss of my brother, per se... it was the pain that his wife was in. It just destroyed me seeing her that way.

Unfortunately, I have lost contact with her and my nephews... in part... well, probably, a big reason is that every time I have seen her, those feelings come rushing back and it is just a huge knot inside me. That pain just wells up and I cowardly cannot deal with it.

 

[UFO]

I think that "I wonder what X is doing now after all these years?" is a different thing than being aware of out-of-sight physical items.

I usually know exactly where items are supposed to be, have no doubts about it, and I don't think them until I need them (I don't think many people suddenly wonders "if that spoon is at left or right side of the drawer?"). When they are moved around (by other people, but sometimes I think that house-elves do that as well) it is only slightly annoying as it is unnecessary work and waste of time to look for them. I am not exactly highly organized person either, thought I do keep numbered accounts of my movie collection...

With people it is just like Outdated described, mostly because I create very little emotional ties to them (I register things that I experience with people, not people themselves). If I have those ties, then I grief at funerals just like everyone else, but I still don't wonder "how they are doing" (not spontaneously, and not when someone mentions them while being on a memory lane).

What I wonder is that how many people see other people like I do: a separate thing from discussions, events etc. things that you can do with them? I can't say that I like a person as whole, I just like things that has happened with him/her, and I can't help of thinking that same things can happen with anyone else, so I don't create emotional ties to that person but to the experiences with him/her.

e.g., worrying that absent people are "dead" or permanently gone until proven otherwise.

My mother has began to show symptoms like this, but she is old and showing early signs on dementia. Sometimes I have to explain her that some items are still available from a grocery store even though she hasn't eaten them for awhile...

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Well...

I hate cupboards unless the doors are see-through (and I remove them to create shelves when living alone)....

My next house will definitely have windowed cupboards. So nice.

And to do anything at all with more than one step or where not all pieces can be kept in view, I need it all guided by visual+kinesthetic cuing -- this is why it matters so much that people don't mess with the positioning of objects in my house....I do not have OCD, I have severe EF impairments.

I'm not quite there... but yes, don't move my stuff around.

That said, I can picture the exact position of every single object in a fridge, cupboard, suitcase, whatever, if I think about it...actually I can do this with an entire house if it's familiar.

Exactly. Do I know where the large objects are? Yes. Do I "know" with any certainty what is in those large objects... NO. "What's in your luggage?" Well, I can tell you what might be in there... LOL! Don't ask me specifics though. My wife often wants to know if we are low on something so she can add it to our next shopping list... and she's stopped asking... I don't have a clue. LOL!

But I don't really forget about people just because they aren't in view...And I do at times miss those who are absent. Not 24/7 but does anyone think about people who aren't right there constantly vs because of particular things that remind them of that person?

I don't know how to answer that one. No perspective. However, what I can tell you is that nearly everyone else that I am around, my wife, my co workers... they are always texting with, group chatting, phoning, sending funny memes, making plans to go out with them, so on and so forth. It's a significant behavioral trait... something that I just do not have. It's just not a thought in my head at all.

It's one of those things where, for example, someone here (usually a young person) on the forums will be distressed about not being able to make friends or find a life partner. Intellectually, I can sit behind a computer screen and make a nice itemized list of things that need to be done in order to meet, make, and keep a relationship going... but seriously, if you don't have the "software and hardware"... the "operating system"... to make those changes permanent... forget it. Game over. I know it... I've just stopped trying to do something my brain just isn't wired up to do.

 

[Mary Terry]

I have a good memory of where everything is supposed to be. I wish my husband would thoroughly look through the refrigerator before he opens a new jar of something. Right now, there are multiple duplicate open jars of pickles, jalapenos, salsa, honey mustard, jelly and jams in the fridge because he either forgets that some is already open or forgets to look before he opens new containers.

 

[Judge]

With my OCD it can be especially painful when I have misplaced much of anything, running around my home like a chicken with my head cut off, simply because I may be experiencing a "senior moment" and cannot recall where I meticulously placed something, only to realize it was a simple mistake on my part.

Such experiences can traumatize me to a point of having to check certain things multiple times now that shouldn't really need rechecking. But my own errors compel me to do so.

Glad this was brought up. That much of anything not immediately within any of my routines can easily be physically- or mentally misplaced.

 

[FayetheADHDsquirrel]

I do NOT relate to forgetting people I care about if they are not present and I definitely grieve when a loved one (human or animal ) passes. I do; however, have difficulty remembering multi-step instructions without a written list to reference unless I have done the task enough times for the steps to become habitual. Also, I tend to forget faces and such of people that I don't actually know sometimes. This part made it difficult in retail when a customer would ask something such that I had to leave and come back to them. I would remember something vague like elderly lady with pink sweater, but if another elderly lady with a pink sweater came up while I was gone, I didn't know which one I had been speaking with previously. It was really weird when the original person would leave and someone who fit the general description would have come to shop in the area. I would go up to them explaining something about a product or something and they would not know WHAT I was talking about because they were a different person.

 

[Mary Terry]

With my OCD it can be especially painful when I have misplaced much of anything, running around my home like a chicken with my head cut off, simply because I may be experiencing a "senior moment" and cannot recall where I meticulously placed something, only to realize it was a simple mistake on my part.

Such experiences can traumatize me to a point of having to check certain things multiple times now that shouldn't really need rechecking. But my own errors compel me to do so.

Glad this was brought up. That much of anything not immediately within any of my routines can easily be physically- or mentally misplaced.

I wear over-the-counter reader glasses when I need to read something. After years of not being able to find them, even when they are perched on top of my head, I finally bought a pair of glasses for every room in the house and all of the vehicles and for my purse. I even have a pair stashed in the garage.

 

[Judge]

I wear over-the-counter reader glasses when I need to read something. After years of not being able to find them, even when they are perched on top of my head, I finally bought a pair of glasses for every room in the house and all of the vehicles and for my purse. I even have a pair stashed in the garage.

I have done that for years. Even have a pair in the car....just in case. When I do my hobbies I usually wear them on top of my prescription glasses I wear while using the computer.

Though nothing more irritating than to go to watch tv when I discover I'm still wearing my computer glasses, and need to replace them with my distance glasses.

 

[JayLapointe]

So, for as long as I can remember, I've always had this social experience where if a person in my life is not in my field of vision... most of the time... 98% of the time... I just don't think of them. I am so focused upon what I am doing in the moment or in a state of thought where "people" just don't enter my mind. With that comes the realization that... at least for myself... it severely limits my ability to maintain a friendship. I have plenty of people in my life. People I genuinely like being around, but the experience is quite limited to say, a co-worker... at work... nothing more. When I was in competitive athletics... my training partners and competitors... same thing. We have a great exchange... and as soon as they walk away... I am focused upon something else and they never enter my mind again until I see them again. Family... same thing. OK, so that's the background.

Then... yesterday... at work, I had another epiphany at work that made me think that this experience is not just limited to people. I was asked to do something simple... replace the batteries on a few pieces of medical equipment... and replace the back-up set of batteries in our medical supply bags we use for patient transport. Fine. Got it. Replaced the batteries in the equipment... no problem. Get to the bags... couldn't find the old set of back-up batteries... gave it little thought... found a zipper pocket to place the new batteries in, zipped it up... done. I let my co-worker know via text. "All set... this is were they can be found in the bags." A few minutes later... he calls... "We have a designated spot for those batteries, why didn't you put them there?" Me: "We do?" "Where?" "I dug around in all 6 bags... never found the old sets." "Frankly, didn't know we kept an extra set of batteries." Now, consider, I have been doing patient transport for...35+ years... countless patient transports... dug into those bags countless times. He says, "There's a laminated 8x11 card in the front pocket on where to find everything in the bags." Me: "There is?" "That's handy information, but I don't recall seeing any such card... ever." At this point, I can only imagine what he is thinking... THE senior transport therapist... by a long shot... totally clueless as to what is in the transport bags he uses nearly every day. He says, "I'll take care of it." and we end the exchange.

Now, that didn't sit well with me. I started thinking about it... and then... that "light bulb" lit up. "Oh crap, out of sight out of mind!" In the case of those transport bags, I realized that whenever I opened those bags, I have always had to dig around in all the zipper pockets to find anything. I know that there is "stuff" in there, but I don't know "what stuff" nor where it is... every time... every time. I was thinking, "Holy crap!" It never dawned on me. Then, I was thinking about whenever I pack my backpack, or travel luggage, or put things in my pockets... same thing. Double "Holy crap!" I know I have "stuff" in the bag, but don't ask me what or where it is. I pat myself down several times a day looking for pens, pieces of note paper, etc. I know I am carrying it... but don't know where it is. Countless times in my life... so many times I quite literally never think about it.

So, I did do an AI search on this topic... apparently a common thing.

Anyone else?

Certainly when it comes to people I'm like that. If someone isn't in my regular daily orbit I just stop thinking about them entirely. Like I have to keep a calendar of scheduled checkin reminders so that I remember to talk to folks I might not see every day, and that is mostly just to keep up social appearances which I care much less about since learning I was autistic. It's why I don't get lonely or miss people, hard to feel that way when you simply do not think about them. But it has been like that my entire life. now with friends some of them I'll not talk to or think about for years but when we do meet up it's like we've never skipped a minute.

Now in terms of how that applies in other aspects I have a feeling I'm also very similar to you and the laminated card deal, I just haven't thought about it before to have anything come to mind. But if it works that way with my social relationships I'm sure it hits other areas I'd not even realized.

 

[Xinyta]

This is definitely me. Tunnel vision to the max. Unless I make an actual effort to take note of things, I'll probably be unaware of half the stuff in a room. Though this has improved to a certain degree. But things that are out of sight will definitely evade my attention, garenteed.