My Earliest Memory

[apple_pathways]

I've done research on the psychological phenomenon of memory, and the average age of a person's first verifiable memory is about 3.5 years, with about 90% of people dating their first memory to between 2.5 and 4.5 years.

The first memory I can independently date and verify comes one month before my 2nd birthday, when I was hospitalized over Christmas for asthma. I have a couple other memories that might or might not have occurred earlier, but I can independently verify the date I was in the hospital and the age I was at the time.

Here's what I remember:

• I remember the giant crib that I slept in while I was there. (When I retold this to my dad, he laughed and said, "Giant crib?" I then realized that the crib only seemed giant because I was so small, which is a very weird thing to realize in retrospect! At the time, it seemed massive.)
  
  
• I remember it being dark, and me still being awake, and looking out the bars of the crib. (According to my mother, I drove the nurses and the other parents on the ward crazy staying up all night talking and singing to myself. I couldn't sleep because of the steroids they gave me for my asthma.)
  
  
• Since it was Christmas, Santa came to visit us, and he gave me a plastic wind-up radio that played "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
  

The parts I don't remember are coming home the day after Christmas, and my parents putting the presents under the tree and pretending that day was Christmas.

So, I'm curious: what is everyone else's earliest memory? Can you verify the age/date it took place? Have you always remembered the incident, or was the memory spurred by a story told to you by family? Do you have lots of memories before the age of four, or just a few?

And more lines of scientific inquiry: were you an early talker? Were you a talkative child in general? What were your favorite games to play when you were little: imaginative role-play? Active, physical play? Solitary activities? Building/modelling?

Comments

[emiliusredux.livejournal.com]

My earlies memory happened at some poin between one year one and two years. I remember it so well because I was always thinking about as a kid. By now it's more of a memory of a memory, but I digress.

In my earliest memory, I was in my high chair. I was curious about what would happen if I pushed back against the table with my feet as hard as I could. Lo and behold, the world went topsy-turvy and I was suddenly staring at the ceiling. I also remember that the kitchen walls were yellow and later confiriming that with my mother.

I have a lot of memories that happened before I was four, but they all seem to blur together like tangled yarn.

I have Asberger's Syndrome, so I was developmentaly delayed. I could talk but I couldn't talk clearly until I was about six or so. I was very talkative as a young child and somehow oblivious to the fact that no one save my parents could understand a word I was saying. I simply thought that grown-ups never seemed to listen and went about my business.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Ooh, another early memory! I find it very interesting, though, that you have so many memories before the age of four, even with the speech delay. One theory of why we form so few memories before the age of four or five is that we simply don't have the language skills to analyze and probably assess events, in order to code them for future reference. Hence my questions about early language development, imaginative play, etc.

Obviously there must be other factors involved!

I conducted a similar experiment to yours when I was a baby: I found out what would happen if I tried to go down the stairs in my walker at 6 months old. (Turns out, I just tumbled down them.) Of course, I don't remember that, thank goodness!

Thanks for your insights!

[sabriel75.livejournal.com]

Most of my earliest memories are very traumatic and rather quite frightening, but have all been verified and a lot occurred before the age of two. Because of the trauma, not because I could not speak or understand, I did not really talk until I was five.

Although, my second year as a Clinical Psychology major, we met the Father of Cognitive Psychology who really felt strongly that no one ever remembers even traumatic events before the age of five and people on a whole rarely retain memories as they were at the time of the event but simply preserve such events over time by repeating them and not accurately.

Needless to say I vehemently disagreed with him and there have been loads of theories out there that have. He used the Challenger blowing up for the traumatic event and then asked people five years later to repeat where they were on that day. It's funny but nearly his entire sample group could not repeat their experiences accurately from that day. All of them remembered it quite differently. Although I say that unless it had been a personal loss, that I don't consider the Challenger blowing up traumatic enough to be a good enough starting point for how people remember or make memories.

I dunno.

I do remember my sister being in the hospital when she was little for asthma and the crib looked ginormous to me too, I was probably four or five. And since most of the little children were sick in that ward, when they took me to the playroom, I felt like I was in a nightmare where everyone had disappeared and I was the only one left. I just sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, dazed and waited hopefully for someone to come back and get me. Didn't play with a thing. :D

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Thanks for giving such a thorough and thoughtful answer! I'm fascinated by the concept of memory, and especially memories of childhood trauma. My mother suffered from severe depression when I was a child, and I have a lot of memories stemming from that. I can't verify them with her, since she doesn't really acknowledge that part of her life. (Thanks for sharing a bit of your personal pain. This confession is my attempt at reciprocity! One confession for another.)

One thing that I've always hated about psychology is the researchers who get so wrapped up in a pet theory they forget that it's a theory, and could be proven wrong. I've read about the Challenger studies! I agree with you: though it was certainly a tragedy, it's not at all the same as experiencing personal trauma. And while early memories are certainly less reliable than later memories, and more prone to confabulation, that doesn't make them wholly discountable (or impossible).

I thought those cribs were bigger than normal! I'm glad to have someone else say so.

And hospital playrooms are often quite creepy. I used to work in one occasionally when I was a patient attendant, and I would hate to be left alone in one as a child!

[rewindclunkplay.livejournal.com]

to be honest I don't really remember my earliest memories. I can't really fit a specific time on them. My memories are kind of divided into two parts- before and after my mother got sick. Kind of like in Looking for Alaska lol. So I have memories from before and after but I don't know where in my life they fell, just where they lie in reference to my mother.

In answer to your other questions, I was not an early talker at all. My mother actually took me to a doctor because she was worried about it. Now she always jokes that she wishes she could go back to those days, because now I don't shut up :)

I don't know what games I liked. All I know is I liked Barney and my dog lol.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about being unable to date your early memories! That's pretty standard. And it's very common to relate experiences by their proximity to one major life event. I can imagine your mother getting sick when you were so young must have been life-changing!

I ask about when you started to talk, because it relates to one theory of why most people don't form memories before the age of 3 or 4; it's that we simply don't have the language necessary to process and code the experience for later reference.

I spoke in complete sentences by the time I was a year old, which is why I think I have so many early memories. I also never shut up, but my mother never really had much of a break!

[stick-poker.livejournal.com]

My first memory is undatable but must be quite early. It was night, I'd climbed out of my cot, and I was sat by the bars of the baby-gate on the bedroom, which was there because I could climb out of my cot. The room behind me was dark but the light was on on the landing, and I can remember everything there clearly, a big square space with five doors and the stairs, the blanket box and the blue and yellow swirly pattern on the carpet. And I'd thrown my dummy through the bars of the gate and couldn't reach it and was trying to work out whether to cry to get it back.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I love a toddler who's able to weigh the pros and cons before acting!