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!