Memory is a funny thing and I am trying to understand as well.
DS8 may have some form of audiovisual photographic memory. Im really not sure when he started reading because at 18 mths, hed recite pages from his books. When he was 3, he started rattling off this long message about "aft doors" and stopped midway to ask what a lavatory was. Turned out it was the safety message read out on the plane- we had gone on a holiday a few months earlier. At the Wisc, the psych commented that he may have photographic memory bevause he didn't have to check back to know what symbol went with what in the coding section. Never mind he got tired, stopped writing, and bombed the section. He can spell out long words backwards (his vision therapist asked him as a test of visual memory). Once, we were watching Star Trek. There was some question about who fired the lasers. He paused for awhile, replayed the segment in his head and told us " The Klingons did it because the laser was red".
I think all this shows up in his huge vocabulary and encyclopedic knowledge.
But, this ability is not uniformed. He regularly can't remember what he ate for breakfast, he forgets instructions or doesn't even hear them. He has CAPD, but his memory makes him uncharacteristic.
