We have three different types of memory: short term, long term, and working memory. The brain retrieves short term memory first. In young children, the short term memory is under developed, so it is quite unreliable. Many educators learned from scientists that to help children with memory, they had to learn through repetition. Programs at school began to follow those facts as a rule. As they learned through repetition, the things learned in short term memory would move to their long term memory. Repetition helps strengthen the neural pathways and also helps children retain what they are learning. Short term memory holds information very shortly before the brain deletes it. However, if the information is repeated, then the brain will store that information in the long term memory, so you could think of this as a storage file. You can retrieve information stored a lot easier than the information missing, so that is why long term memory is so dependable. Now, the working memory is the memory you have at present and the retrieval process of the information in your brain. It checks short term memory first and then later checks the long term memory for data that you are trying to recall.
Hippocampus is the part of the brain that is in charge of dealing with facts in the long term memory. The cerebral cortex Is the distributor of memory and it does so through categorizing it into different areas and next storing it according to our five different senses: touch, taste smell, sound, and sight. These two areas belong in the Frontal Cortex.
Since kids with autism are "wired" differently, the functioning processes of memory are also different. You can click on this link: http://psychology.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=44 to study that difference:
As I mentioned in a previous post, they tend to rely upon pictures. This link focuses on the Amydala. The Amydala involves the part of the brain dealing with emotion and memory.
I was watching you tube videos this morning of adults on the autistic spectrum do to cope in the world with their memory problems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACFE9WpzlzA&noredirect=1 It was interesting. For example, They will usually state their date of birth when asked their age because it is easier to recall a memory that never changes. It's consistent, as your age changes every year.
I was fortunate that this information on memory was fresh as I had just graduated from college, so I could apply it into motherhood. It was redundant to go over the same info constantly for my kids benefit, but I knew in the long run it would be for the best. I knew repetition would bring critical and basic info to the long term memory. I made it a goal.
