Building on success

Over the last few weeks, Jman has built three little Lowes workshop projects with me: a jewelry box, a bird house, and a hang glider. These three little events make for a decent little venture into explaining a bit about episodic memory and autism. First, a couple loose definitions are in order.

People on the autistic spectrum often excel at procedural memory. They can remember exactly how to do things (and heaven help you if you don't do it exactly "right," the way they remember and expect!). For example, I remember when Jman at 3-4 years old had no trouble with the procedures of making himself lunch. Rather than waiting for the family or asking for help, he'd get homemade gfcf chicken nuggets out of the freezer, put them on a plate, microwave them for the correct amount of time, and add ketchup. He was in school and receiving speech and ABA at home at the time. I remember his SLP being flabbergasted at what he was doing in the kitchen while we were chatting one day. I also remember my being flabbergasted at her being flabbergasted. After all, the common saying around our house was (and still is): "He's not stupid! He's just autistic!" Procedural memory is the memory of facts and procedures, and is thus very rote, very sterile, very black and white, right or wrong, and something that is NOT a deficit in autism.

People on the autistic spectrum do struggle with episodic memory, however. Episodic memory is the memory of episodes in one's life AND the personal meaning that one attaches to those episodes. For example, if you ask your child what they did at school today and they give you a run down of all the events that happened but without any emotion or reflection or opinion, that is NOT episodic memory but rather procedural memory. They may answer, "First I did my math lesson. Then we had music today and learned to sing 'Goober Peas.' Later I ate my lunch outside. I sat with Johnny and Susie at the table. Johnny stole Susie's apple. Susie told the teacher and Johnny got in trouble. Then we went back to class and did reading." That kind of answer is procedural memory; it tells what happened.

However, if your child's answer included emotion and reflection and projection such as this it would be episodic memory: "I did math first today. I like it when we get math over with first thing. And Johnny got in trouble at lunch today! He stole Susie's apple AGAIN! This time Susie ratted on him, and he got in big trouble! Mrs. Smith said Johnny has to eat his lunch alone the rest of this week. Serves him right! I'm not gonna sit at Johnny's table anymore. I wouldn't want him to steal MY lunch next time!"

So, do you see how procedural memory is the 'how to' memory of facts and procedures, but episodic memory involves attaching emotional meaning to personal events in our lives and using that meaning to both reflect on past events and to help one project how they might act in the future? Episodic memory is one of the core deficits of autism spectrum disorders. Someone on the spectrum may remember great details about what happened, but they struggle with understanding and applying the why of what happened and with extracting personal meaning from the events or episodes in their lives.

This deficit in the area of episodic memory has huge ramifications on someone's developing a sense of Self. It affects their ability to evaluate things from different people's perspectives. It also undermines their confidence in their ability to deal with future events, especially when they are unexpected or when they 'go wrong.' They don't have a store house of personal memories of overcoming challenges or solving problems to pull from and to apply to present circumstances that may be challenging. They don't have a store house of personal memories to help guide their thinking in future dreaming and planning. It's more like life was a book they read of events that happened, but that they are still somewhat detached from, even though they were there. Episodic memory is very closely related to autobiographical memory. Could you imagine being a person who has lived a life but is without a personally meaningful 'autobiography?' That's similar to the challenge that folks on the spectrum face in living life. They have great procedural how-to memories, but deficient episodic memories of personal meaning and reflection.

Now, back to the Lowes building projects. The first project was building the jewelry box at home. By building it at home, we reduced potential obstacles to success (noise level, number of people in the room, unfamiliar sounds, uncomfortable lighting conditions, other distractions, etc). We also eliminated the obstacle of time. There was no pressure to be at a certain place at a certain time or to complete the project in a certain amount of time. By reducing the obstacles to his success (or by setting things up positively to increase his likelihood of success) we were 'scaffolding' the project. To read more about that, check out the post on the "Long" and "Short" of it. Our success at building the jewelry box was the first step in constructing some positive episodic memories that Jman could pull on in future endeavors.

Following on that success, the next Saturday we went to Lowes. We hoped that he would remember our successfully building the jewely box together and thus be more comfortable twith approaching the next building project. We thought we'd give Jman the opportunity to build the project there at Lowes, but were totally prepared to simply pick the project up and to build at home. However, Jman did remember his success from the jewelry box and was willing to build there at Lowes. You can read more about it at birdhouse. Now we had a sequence of successes beginning to build in his episodic memory. He applied his successful building with me at home to be able to try building with me in a more challenging environment there at Lowes. And, much to our delight, he was successful in building the birdhouse with me at Lowes too.

This past Saturday was yet another building project at Lowes. However, he was NOT having a good morning. He didn't want to put on his sandals. He didn't want to leave the truck. He didn't want to enter the store. We were quickly adjusting down our expectations and just hoping to have him walk to the back of the store with us to pick up the project to bring home. We did what we always try to do when Jman is feeling particularly stressed for some reason (often unknown to us): we slowed down. And slowly Jman did join me, walk through the store with me, and into the back work room. Then, much to our amazement, he chose a seat, sat down, picked up the project pack and began trying to get it open. Apparently, even though he was not having a good morning, he recalled his successes at building and wanted more success! Isn't it amazing how success is addictive? And so, once again, we stayed at Lowes and together built the hang glider.

I've speculated over the last couple weeks as to why he worked so well at Lowes after the serious meltdowns he's had at Lowes in the past. I think the answer is largely two-fold. First, the physical environment provided for the workshops at this Lowes provides much better scaffolding for Jman than the Lowes in FL did. Here the workshop is in a smaller room, well lit (though still fluorescent), with tables and chairs. In FL the kids worked in a warehouse room with poor lighting and poor acoustics and were given rubber mats to sit on to do their work on the floor. For Jman, that environment was very distracting and unsettling, but here it's rather pleasant in comparison. Scaffolding the physical environment, particularly when one does not have a solid repetoire of episodic memories to call on for internal scaffolding can be critical to success.

Second is of course episodic memory. Jman still does not have the language to tell me in words what emotions or meanings he's deriving from shared events like our building projects. But based on his gestures and actions, it certainly seems that Jman is slowly building an autobiography of successful episodes of trusting me to lead him and to work together with him through little events like Lowes building projects. We could take the development of successful episodic memories a step further by putting together a little scrapbook of our building projects to look at and share, reflecting on the past and perhaps projecting into the future about other projects (at Lowes or something entirely different) that we could do together. We could include the certificates of completion and/or the patches that Lowes includes with photos of us working on the project. It'd be interesting to see how Jman would relate and respond to such a scrapbook over time. Someday maybe he'll be building me a rocking chair for my old age in his own workshop and reminescing with me about the good old days when we built birdhouses together at Lowes. Wouldn't that be cool?