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Woahhh cool that there is a word for it! I most definitely have a similar memory (autobiographical)...and am 30! I've been learning how to navigate it - for e

Woahhh cool that there is a word for it! I most definitely have a similar memory (autobiographical)...and am 30! I've been learning how to navigate it - for example "tell me about a time that..." is extremely difficult for me. But if I change the prompt to "think of a time when I was living at my grandparents house in the winter" or similar, I can begin to recall things, specificity is key. I also have difficulty when people are like "remember X time", and nothing will come up, and I'll have to ask further questions to try and trigger the memory, often when it triggers the whole thing can flood in. I also find that my mind doesn't typically rehash old things, the mind isn't stewing in memories, it's usually in futurescapes or random thought lines on topics. I actually think this is one of the reasons for me not being able to pull it up quickly and needing specific ways to trigger the memory, it's like the memories are in cold storage.

yamtaddle 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_memory#Memory_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_memory#Memory... Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) is that name for the condition. Interviews I've read with exemplars who've been the means for researchers discovering that it exists (I think some are in the article's references?) puts them about one notch worse than I am, but most of what they describe rings extremely true. In particular, remembering that things happened but having very little of what I gather are ordinary memories of the events, not having an idea of where those events fit into any kind of chronology without painstakingly working through some kind of dependency reasoning like "well we got X there and we had that at time Y so it must have been before that..." I'll be like that for stuff that happened last year, or ten years ago, but also last month, or even last week. Ask me when some notable thing I recently did happened and I'm likely not to be able to place it more precisely than "I think it was this quarter, at least? Maybe?" but even that I get wrong pretty often ("um, no, that was Spring of last year") Like I don't get that stuff wrong 100% of the time, but it's definitely most of the time. Maybe 80%, and often comically wrong. As described by those interviewees, this has surprisingly little effect on, say, work or school life. I remember facts and processes and such just fine. Maybe better than most, even.
- nabakin 4y ago
  This is exactly my case as well. Most of my family too, I'd venture, but to varying degrees.
- nabakin 4y ago
  Found this BBC article on it https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181112-severely-deficient-autobiographical-memory-is-surprisi https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181112-severely-deficie...

yamtaddle 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_memory#Memory_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_memory#Memory... Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) is that name for the condition. Interviews I've read with exemplars who've been the means for researchers discovering that it exists (I think some are in the article's references?) puts them about one notch worse than I am, but most of what they describe rings extremely true. In particular, remembering that things happened but having very little of what I gather are ordinary memories of the events, not having an idea of where those events fit into any kind of chronology without painstakingly working through some kind of dependency reasoning like "well we got X there and we had that at time Y so it must have been before that..." I'll be like that for stuff that happened last year, or ten years ago, but also last month, or even last week. Ask me when some notable thing I recently did happened and I'm likely not to be able to place it more precisely than "I think it was this quarter, at least? Maybe?" but even that I get wrong pretty often ("um, no, that was Spring of last year") Like I don't get that stuff wrong 100% of the time, but it's definitely most of the time. Maybe 80%, and often comically wrong. As described by those interviewees, this has surprisingly little effect on, say, work or school life. I remember facts and processes and such just fine. Maybe better than most, even.

nabakin 4y ago
This is exactly my case as well. Most of my family too, I'd venture, but to varying degrees.
nabakin 4y ago
Found this BBC article on it https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181112-severely-deficient-autobiographical-memory-is-surprisi https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181112-severely-deficie...