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Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

I have a terrible memory for names, and (relatedly?) have awful auto-biographiical memory, which is apparently a distinct thing from other forms of memory. I've got an average-ish memory otherwise.

I'd have trouble giving you specifics of what I did last week, for instance, and I'd be lucky if I could come up with more than one or two things from last month. Last year is a blur—I could come up with a handful of details, mostly anchored to holidays since it's easy to prompt myself with "I know Christmas happened, what did I do for that?" and the like. Forming parts of my life into any kind of narrative is incredibly challenging. I hated those "what did you do over the Summer?" writing prompts elementary school teachers love to give the first week back.

Maybe your situation is similar. I don't have a diagnosis or anything, but pretty sure I'm affected by this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overgeneral_autobiographical_m...

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I'm a longtime HN lurker that has never signed up for an account.

I created one just now to reply and say thank you for linking this. I have always suffered from these exact symptoms and I knew something wasn't "right," but I could never put it in to words. You did for me.

I'm bookmarking it now so I can talk to my doctor about it! Granted I'll forget about it for like 3 days, until I remember it randomly while doing something else, only to forget about it again before I ever commit it to memory. But still, thank you!

Has that affected your career in any way, especially when interviewing?

It has certainly made interviewing hell for me. "Tell me about yourself," they say. My best attempts at explaining anything I've done sound like I'm spouting off random BS, even if it's as basic as how my ride in was or what I had for breakfast.

If I really think about it, then I can think of details. Or I go through my email archive. Then I write what I did down as a form of a history or resume for myself. I did projects x, y & z and so on.

So: Write down your history and summarize before your interview to keep it fresh in your mind.

OH yeah, though (as you note) mostly interviewing. Those "tell me about a time when something went wrong" or "tell me about a time you had a conflict with someone" sorts of questions are really stressful. I damn near have to make something up (when prepping, not on the fly) to have anything resembling a satisfying answer to them. I just cannot easily turn my experiences into narratives, most of the time.

... I honestly can't tell if people in this thread are trying to be long-winded or not.

Oh yeah, same problem here. The absolute worse is answering questions from border/customs officers. It always feels like I'm being deliberately vague or trying to hide something.

When i was young, I had an excellent factual memory. I'd remember rules for dungeons and dragons, i could tell you the page, the paragraph and the nearby art to look for. As i got older i noticed that type of memory started to fade, and i'd remember things more procedurally - what things do rather than what they are. It takes me longer to find a rule in a book, but i have deep understanding of what that rule does, how it works.

D&D is a silly example, but it happened for all sorts of things. I sometimes draw blanks on names or faces, but once i get the link back to a conversation we had, i can remember all sorts of details about the person.

The memories themselves are probably built because of interest, a more interesting person is more memorable. But the transition from a fact based model of the world to a action based model of the world was kind of disturbing.

I've read that many/most children have a nearly photographic memory up until age 11 or so.

I don't have a citation for it, though.

That's really interesting, thank you for the link! Have you ever heard of treatments? Not for a cure specifically, but to help improve specific recall random memories (ie, not specifically remembering Billy, but all people)?

Not aware of any. Only recently found out about this—didn't realize until a few years ago that I was so far outside of normal, just thought everyone's experience was similar to mine, more or less. Only found that Wikipedia article in the last year or so (may have been 2 months ago, may have been 10—haha!)

With memories I want to stick, I consciously play them over again. That kind of works. I still lose so many details that I end up with some vague half-fake thing for which I have to invent details (colors, for example) again every time I re-play it, and that's only a few seconds long, but at least it's something.

Mostly I try not to think about it too much because it's kinda horrifying :-/

> Mostly I try not to think about it too much because it's kinda horrifying :-/

I can definitely relate to that.

I also have a pretty bad autobiographical memory. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I am X or X-1 years old, how many years I lived in a specific country, how long I worked for a company or simpler things like when was the last time I went to the movies. On the bright side, I've noticed that I can more easily forgive people and don't hold onto bad memories for long.

I don't know of a cure but taking a lot of pictures and having a spouse to serve as my backup memory helps a lot.

Does prompting help retrieval? Like if someone shows you a picture or reminds you of an event?

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