My Earliest Memory

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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

[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!