I was in a chat room
and one of the members brought up something
that I have also wondered about.

We ADDers take in a lot of information
and learn things and then
we forget some of the things we learn.

Are we loosing this information or is it
in our minds somewhere waiting to be
refreshed by some reminder?

Like when we watch movies previously watched
and forget the ending so it is like watching it
for the first time again.

Kath

nah its gone

SamGoldstein.com makes reference to this with the phrase retrograde memory loss.

i think it varies... sometimes gone, sometimes buried.

The impairment in Add/adhd is in "working memory". That is short term memory.

If you can get it to Long Term Memory by OVERLEARNING, you will have it forever.

:)

Those were all well said.

Isn't medication suppost to help with that ? :/

Yes.But which medication and at what dose is always unknown until a trial is done.

It used to be (around here) that some physicians would do "double blind" medication trials where the child was given a weeks worth of meds and a weeks worth of placebo.
The parents wouldn't know which was which and would then chart their child's target behaviors;followed by the use of standardized rating scales for each week.

I believe some docs still do that but I haven't seen it in a while.

I don't know about any of you, but my long-term memory is great. My short-term however, not so much. If I have to take a test the week after a lecture, I'll do terrible, but three weeks later, I do great (and it's not because of repetion). It's like the more time that goes by the deeper it gets imbedded in my brain.

I notice this with everyday life situations also, I can remember tiny details about most anything, things no one else can (accept my dad who prob also has ADD). Most things are like this, I'll remember things I read to great details, but the week or so after I've read them. It's like it takes time to sink in. But when my mom asks, I can't remember what I talked to my grandmother about on the phone five minutes ago.

What's so wierd about it is that I don't go through the process of transferring short term stuff to long term stuff, it just becomes long term... but never short term. The more I explain it the weirder it sounds, even to me, but it's the way my brain is working.

Anyone else have good long term memory (with out trying) but no short term?

--Pigeon

My problem is... basicly I remember bits and pieces of everything..... basicly so that when someone asks I can piece it all together to make a logical answer :p I know alot of people who memorize everything... but i say memorize a few words/things about a subject and bs the rest :)

Heres the way I see it... if you ask me how such and such movie ends I won't remember... but if you give me some clues... then boom it comes back to me... It's there in your mind... But the way I see it is... people with ADD take in so much information it's hard... I think the problem with people with ADD is that our brains can't sort threw information like normal people... We just try to take in everything... most peoples minds just dismiss information after it's recieve because it's not important... But with us... we don't do that... Our brains try to log in everything lol... Perfect example... I was over at my g/fs house(sorry for all the g/f stories) and she moved something and I was like this room has changed... and I found what she movied... she moved a Gamepro mag... to the other side of the table... lol thats pretty damn good... It's in ur mind but you just need a refresher :)



I was in a chat room
and one of the members brought up something
that I have also wondered about.

We ADDers take in a lot of information
and learn things and then
we forget some of the things we learn.

Are we loosing this information or is it
in our minds somewhere waiting to be
refreshed by some reminder?

Like when we watch movies previously watched
and forget the ending so it is like watching it
for the first time again.

Kath

threw information like normal people... We just try to take in everything... most peoples minds just dismiss information after it's recieve because it's not important... But with us... we don't do that... Our brains try to log in everything lol...
I think it is that we use our brains in a very different way. We do pull in important info...just different important info.

Other people's minds turn complex information into "simple information"

That is why we can be so inventive and creative (we also do not process culture the way they do :) ) We keep all the information...the connections that build are powerful because we are observing reality.

Most people "talk" to themselves all day and remember things that way...In ADD we do not think in language until we are trying to say (or think about saying) something :)

My brain is a filing cabinet everything learned is stored there somewhere.
When I go to recall it my brain can't always find the information right away.
It needs help with something to trigger the recall.

I was in a chat room
and one of the members brought up something
that I have also wondered about.

We ADDers take in a lot of information
and learn things and then
we forget some of the things we learn.

Are we loosing this information or is it
in our minds somewhere waiting to be
refreshed by some reminder?

Like when we watch movies previously watched
and forget the ending so it is like watching it
for the first time again.

KathWith the exception of "forgetting what I am doing" I have the best memory of anybody I know. I highly doubt ADD causes you to forget things.
Besides, if somebody picks me up on what I'm doing, I instantly remember.
I believe that is the concept of "Work Memory".

You might enjoy reading some of Baddeley's work on short term memory.

Barb and I just briefly commented on it in another thread.

She also mentioned (Michael) Posner, who is a leader in the research on attention.

I believe the most recent book I've seen of his was : The Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention.

I wouldn't recommend it for a day at the beach, but if you like this stuff, then both of those are interesting.

I wonder if part of the reason we might have trouble locating information in our heads is because when so much information is coming in we might be misplacing it. In other words, if I am in class and my prof is talking about such and such theory and while he's doing that I'm looking at the girl in front of me eating an apple and start thinking about how I need to buy some fruit on the way home. My brain might mistakenly store my prof's theory in the same memory file as it stores my grocery list making it harder to locate the next time I'm looking for it?! Make any sense?!

I forget the names of things a lot but not the definition. Because I often need to understand the whole picture in order to understand a part I don't hold onto the names of the different information cuz I don't think of it in sections.

I'm not very eloquent today! LOL!!

I usually remember general ideas better than specifics. I have given up on trying to remember some song names! ;)

ME TOO!! I can't remember the name of songs and in most instances the name of he artist either!

*laff*

Many of the tests for ADHD/ADD consist of.... Memory Tests.

However, yes, not all ADHD/ADDers have memory problems.

Maybe you are the exception. :) Lucky for you. :)

explained ADHD memory perfectly to me.

Memory is nothing more than information retrieval. The human brain takes in infomation and stores it for use/access later/when needed.

The normal brain files information much like a standard filing cabinet. People can easily retrieve information because their brains have placed them in a logical sequence for retrieval. They filter info and can compartmentalize information efficiently.

The ADHD brain does the same stuff, but 1.) with more information because we don't filter the same way and 2.) less efficiently. Some of our 'compartments' are organized better than others, which is why we might be able to remember stuff say, about grammer and not so much about math, but another ADHD person might be a math wiz who can't spell worth a lick but can ciper PI to the 5 billionth number. Also, tack on the fact that the stuff we file, because our filters are completely different, generally has 'mental sticky notes' on it, so, we might not be able to remember if 'i before e except after c' is the right way, but we can remember Mrs. Ross from high school English wore some gawdawful pink poncho on rainy days. So we have these unorganized filing cabinets with little tiny mental notes posted to most everything we have stored.


WE have the same type of filing mechanism, but our filing system is much more random and generally includes more information that doesn't need to get filed in the first place.

Yup. ADHD is a Working Memory problem. :)

Memory (short term storage) is needed for Learning (long term storage).

My working memory is really faulty when it comes to remembering what I intended to do next, or remembering where I was in that project I just got distracted from.

But in school, I could cram for an exam and remember details, equations etc. and ace the test anytime in the next week. But 2 weeks later? Mostly gone. That's the wrong time frame for working memory, isn't it? Seems too long.