> Glowacki is on the autism spectrum and has superlative memory and calendar recall skills.
I've also known several autistic people who have great memories; I don't know if the right word would be "interest", "obsession", or "compulsion", but they have an inclination to go over certain facts in their heads over and over, so of course developing a good memory for those facts is natural.
I've seen similar articles and TV segments about people who particularly remember autobiographical facts, what they were doing everyday for decades. Again, it's not "automatic" memory, as it tends to be sensationalized, but rather the result of an interest or obsession to continually think about it. For instance, this woman talks about being somewhat obsessive-compulsive about her past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoxsMMV538U
> Unfortunately, it didn’t translate into academic exam success in his weaker subjects like maths and science: “I only remember things I like.”
When you're interested in something, you will naturally think about it more often. So the memory itself really isn't the phenomenon so much as the relative rarity of someone being interested in such details in the first place.
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The real magic would be to be able to remember something without effort, interest, or attention. I'd love to be able to read a book while daydreaming and then reread it in my head later for processing. Or remember some detail from another day that I didn't pay attention to at all at first, rewinding it in my head like a video. And though that's sometimes how movies and media like to sensationalize good memory, there's no evidence that it can work that way for anyone at all.
Anyway, the real skill is the ability to make meaningful and novel connections in the data, to be able to do something unique with it. You've gotta have some working memory for that, but being an encyclopedia of vast trivia (that you could just as easily depend on book and the Internet for) doesn't seem to lead to profound and useful insights by itself (as far as I can tell).
This works for short term audio. Sometimes you hear something without paying attention and you don't understand, but you can somehow replay the sound in your head and parse it again.
Maybe a related phenomenon for vision. When you are in the dark in the middle of the room, not knowing where the obstacles are. You flash a light for a very brief, subliminal instant. Your brain can't process the scene during that flash, but you can somehow mentally study and make a mental map of the obstacles later.
On the other hand I personally can't produce any meaningful memories of odors.
“I only remember things I like.” sounds very much like ADHD (inattentive type).
> I'd love to be able to read a book while daydreaming and then reread it in my head later for processing.
I always wonder whether audiobooks can facilitate this where you listen to it in the background and your brain processes and assimulates it later (when you're sleeping). Maybe listening to something a few times would work.
I've also known several autistic people who have great memories; I don't know if the right word would be "interest", "obsession", or "compulsion", but they have an inclination to go over certain facts in their heads over and over, so of course developing a good memory for those facts is natural.
I've seen similar articles and TV segments about people who particularly remember autobiographical facts, what they were doing everyday for decades. Again, it's not "automatic" memory, as it tends to be sensationalized, but rather the result of an interest or obsession to continually think about it. For instance, this woman talks about being somewhat obsessive-compulsive about her past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoxsMMV538U
> Unfortunately, it didn’t translate into academic exam success in his weaker subjects like maths and science: “I only remember things I like.”
When you're interested in something, you will naturally think about it more often. So the memory itself really isn't the phenomenon so much as the relative rarity of someone being interested in such details in the first place.
---
The real magic would be to be able to remember something without effort, interest, or attention. I'd love to be able to read a book while daydreaming and then reread it in my head later for processing. Or remember some detail from another day that I didn't pay attention to at all at first, rewinding it in my head like a video. And though that's sometimes how movies and media like to sensationalize good memory, there's no evidence that it can work that way for anyone at all.
Anyway, the real skill is the ability to make meaningful and novel connections in the data, to be able to do something unique with it. You've gotta have some working memory for that, but being an encyclopedia of vast trivia (that you could just as easily depend on book and the Internet for) doesn't seem to lead to profound and useful insights by itself (as far as I can tell).